Strong historical, cultural, linguistic, and religious affinities have bound Iran and Afghanistan within the greater Middle East region. With the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Iran is likely to face the exacerbation of existing nontraditional security challenges and the emergence of new threats. Iran continues to deal with drug trafficking, an influx of refugees and economic migrants, and terrorism caused partly by more than four decades of war in Afghanistan. Although Iranian authorities have cheered the United States (US) pullout and expressed cautious optimism about the Taliban, Tehran's choice of policy toward Afghanistan and its new rulers remains to be decided. Iran is likely to continue a policy of engagement with the Taliban unless the government in Kabul realigns with Tehran's adversaries and poses security threats to Iran. In the latter situation, Iran, resorting to proxy sponsorship, is likely to model its Afghanistan policy on its Iraq policy.

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Examining the trajectory of the secularization of Islam in Iran, this book explains how efforts to Islamize society led, self-destructively, to its secularization. The research engages a range of debates across different fields, emphasizing the politi cal and epistemological instability of the basic categories such as Islam, Sharia, and secularism.The volume is an interdisciplinary study of both the history of Islamic revival and Khomeini's very specific merger of Islamic law and mysticism. It traces back the process of secularization to the early encounter of Iranian intellectuals with Europeans and adoption of their fundamental framework in an Islamic guise. The process continued until the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979, when Khomeini tried to substantively de-secularize Iranian social imaginaries. His attempts were not followed up by his followers, who vigorously reinstated the previous trend, after his death, resulting in a polity that is mostly secular but with Islamic ornaments.Bringing together area studies (Iran), religious studies (Islam), and political theory (secularism), this interdisciplinary volume places findings in a broader nar rative that is both specific to Iran and broad enough to engage a global readership.

In the last decade, China's rapid economic growth has become a hot topic for politicians and intellectuals in Iran. Iranian views on China and its development model are ambiguous and contradictory, despite exponential growth in trade between the two countries. Three broad views have emerged in Iran about the Chinese way of progress. The pragmatic moderates advocate rapid economic development while keeping tight political control, which is broadly known as the China model. Two other political factions have ambivalent views on China. Hardliners focus on the Islamic-Iranian Model of Progress but also admire some aspects of China's policies, especially its opposition to unilateralism in international affairs. Political reforms and social freedom are central to reformists' views. On this ground, reformists are uncomfortable with the China model. During the Covid-19 pandemic, China's aid diplomacy in Iran and critical remarks by an Iranian health authority about China provided a pretext for a more open debate about Sino-Iranian relations, in general, and the China model, in particular. The range of views expressed on the matter confirms our assessment that there is a wide gap between political camps in relation to the applicability of the China model to Iran.

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