ISSN: 2265-6294

Analyzing the Presence of NATO in the Middle East

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Majid Abbasi, Majid Reza Momeni, Ellias Aghili Dehnavi

Abstract

After the end of the Cold War and the evolution of NATO in terms of its operations and missions, this international organization appeared in all parts of the world, including the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. NATO strengthened its presence in the region in 1994 through the Mediterranean Dialogue Program and in 2004 through the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative Program. Therefore, NATO has many reasons and motives for its presence in the region, including the provision of energy security in the Western world, the fight against terrorism (military security), and relations with the Zionist regime (political security). Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to model the factors affecting the analysis of NATO's presence in the Middle East. This study is in the field of descriptive survey research of correlation type, it is applied according to the purpose and subject of the research and it is cross-sectional in terms of time. Moreover, sampling of this research has been determined by the snowball sampling which was among experts and scholars in the field of political science in 2021. Based on the TOPSIS method, 18 unimportant items were removed from the 42 designed items, and the following results were obtained based on the partial least squares method of the research model. Thus, some factors that affect NATO's presence in the Middle East involve energy security 0.842, economic security 0.738, political security 0.459, social Security 0.298, environmental security 0.193, and military security 0.684. What is certain is that energy, economic and military factors have a much stronger impact than other variables in justifying the presence of NATO, and reflect the fact that the presence of NATO is aimed at securing the interests of superpowers and emphasizing other indicators that improve the situation of the countries in the region is on the fringe of the main issue, which is to provide financial and economic benefits to the superpowers.

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