“The World Ahead”

According to Iran Book News Agency (IBNA), Mohammad Javad Zarif, Professor at the University of Tehran and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote: “In fulfillment of a promise I made two years ago regarding explaining my views on the post-bipolar world, the book ‘The World Ahead’ was released to the market with the cooperation of several thinkers.” According to this report, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote on his Instagram page:

Hello friends,

Yesterday, the Ettela’at Institute published the book ‘The World Ahead’. This book was compiled with the cooperation of a group of friends, in fulfillment of a promise I made on this page two years ago. Now, nearly thirty-five years after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the end of the bipolar system, the international community and thinkers are still striving to find and agree upon the current system of international relations. Have new poles or centers emerged in the world, or are they emerging? If so, will the emerging world be unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, or a combination of these?

What is the outlook for crossing the transitional period and reaching a new international (global) system in the next few years or decades? And should we fundamentally await the formation of some kind of polarity in the world, or has the era of polar loyalty come to an end, and the world is now experiencing a new post-polar system, so we should not expect a new polar system? These are the questions that we have endeavored to answer in this collection by utilizing the views of professors and international relations thinkers from the country with different theoretical and political perspectives:

• Chapter One: Polarization and Transition in International Politics: Theoretical Foundations (Dr. Homeira Moshirzadeh)
• Chapter Two: World Order: What It Is and How It Is (Dr. Seyed Jalal Dehghani Firoozabadi)
• Chapter Three: Iran and the Transition of the International System: Continuity of Agency Amidst Collapse and Over-Expansion (Dr. Arash Raeisinejad)
• Chapter Four: Transition from a Unipolar World; A Survey of Proponents and Opponents (Dr. Ruholamin Saeedi)
• Chapter Five: The Emergence of a Multi-Bipolar Global System; Roots and Consequences (Dr. Diako Hosseini)
• Chapter Six: Multipolar World: Reality and Narrative (Dr. Seyed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour)
• Chapter Seven: Post-Bipolar World Order (Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif and Dr. Sasan Karimi)
• Concluding Remarks: Ensuring National Security in the Post-Bipolar World (Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Dr. Mohammad Fazeli and Dr. Sasan Karimi)