Between ideology and analysis: US think-tanks’ approaches to developing recommendations on Iran

Abstract

The present article is devoted to the study of the approaches adopted by some American think tanks in the development of recommendations on Iran. Since the information regarding the interaction between the executive branch and the think tanks is often kept confidential for national security reasons, the four most influential think tanks, whose experts most frequently interact with the legislative branch and are invited to testify at the US Congress hearings, have been chosen as the object for analysis. These include the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The methodological basis of the study is a comparative analysis, which made it possible to classify the think tanks according to their approaches to the development of expert recommendations on the policy of Iran, in keeping with the criteria proposed by the author of the article, based on the analysis of public materials, an expert composition, the sources of funding and the think tanks’ participation in the lobbying activities. The study demonstrated that FDD and WINEP function as advocacy centers, with their recommendations on Iran reflecting a predominantly pro-Israeli orientation. In contrast, the Brookings Institution is distinguished by its commitment to objectivity, while AEI’s recommendations are more influenced by ideological attitudes. The article makes a contribution to the understanding of the role of think tanks in the US foreign policy-making by highlighting the influence of their institutional nature on the content of their recommendations.