"The Axis of Resistance" discourse from an alliance perspective: Balance of Threat and Syrian civil war

This study focuses on the Axis of Resistance that emerged as a discourse and practice in the early 2000s. Relations among Iran and its regional allies, namely, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad, which united against the USA and Israel are defined as the Axis of Resistance since the 2000s, but their roots date back to the fundamental shift that occurred with the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. Although such context led to the description of the Axis of Resistance largely as a result of elements such as ideology and identity in the literature, the rise of a series of threats in the Middle East that coincided with the emergence of the Axis raises the question of the possibility of considering this entity as an alliance beyond discursive and ideological approaches. In this regard, this thesis questions whether the Axis of Resistance is an alliance and by drawing upon Stephen Walt's theory of balance of threat it examines the role of factors such as aggregate power, geographic proximity, aggressive capabilities and aggressive intentions on the formation and strengthening of the Axis of Resistance both in the 1979-2010 period and the Arab Spring era in the context of Syrian civil war. Moreover, the thesis questions how the massive transformation in the state identity as a product of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 shaped Iran's alliance behavior in pre-and post-revolution eras, focusing on the impact of the ideological transformation on the alliance behavior. In this context, the thesis implements the qualitative research methods of the case study and discourse analysis.