İran nükleer programının çerçevelenmesi: İran'ın 2019 uranyum zenginleştirme duyurusuna eleştirel inşacı bir yaklaşım

This thesis analyzes how the United States, Russia, and China frame Iran's 2019 announcement of uranium enrichment differently. The literature on nuclear nonproliferation mostly rests on traditional security thinking, which expects that nuclear weapon states show similar behavior towards a civilian nuclear program with uranium enrichment to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Despite their similarities, the US, Russia, and China responded to Iran's 2019 announcement differently. To study this puzzle, this thesis uses a critical constructivist approach to examine how the case countries constructed their identities of Self and Other, and how the identity construction affected their framing of Iran's nuclear move. This thesis uses articulation and interpellation as analytical tools and discourse analysis to analyze the authorized state officials' official statements, interviews, and presidential speeches during 2019. The US attached exact opposite meanings to the representations of itself and Iran, constructing the identities of Self and Iran as Other through juxtaposition. The US framed Iran's 2019 announcement as a security threat. Russia constructed Self and Other identities in a hierarchical position vis-à-vis Iran. Russia framed Iran's 2019 announcement not through a security framing, but rather considered it a reaction to the unilateral acts of the US. China's construction of identities mainly focuses on the representations of Self that it did not construct an identity of Iran as other, rather it represented Iran as a rational and legitimate actor. China did not consider Iran's 2019 announcement through a security framing but saw it as a reaction based on a cause-and-effect relation with the US. Thus, the US, Russia, and China differently constructed identities of Self and Other vis-à-vis Iran and had divergent responses to Iran's 2019 announcement, which is overlooked by the literature on nuclear nonproliferation.