Energy security policies of Venezuela and Iran in the context of new security

The new security approaches that emerged with the end of the Cold War pushed the limits of the traditional understanding of security centered on the state and military power and added new dimensions and threat areas to the concept of security. One of the areas included in this new perspective has been the concept of energy security theorized within the framework of the Copenhagen School and Green Theory. While the concept of energy security, which forms the theoretical basis of this study, was initially limited to supply security, it has expanded over time to include the demand, transit and infrastructure dimensions of energy and has become a priority agenda item for states due to reasons such as globalization, industrialization, production and the increase in the world population. In countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which are rich in energy resources and whose economies are dependent on these resources, energy security has not only become one of the priority security areas but has also started to be equated with national and economic security. For this reason, these countries have developed strategic approaches to ensure energy security and created policy frameworks to protect their national and economic security, and in this direction, various policies have been developed depending on foreign policy ideology, leaders' visions and political ideologies. Focusing on this situation, which constitutes the main argument of the study, "What are the policies developed by Venezuela and Iran to ensure their energy security in the historical process? Who are the actors influential in determining and managing these policies? How do leaders, political ideologies and foreign policy strategies shape energy policies in this process?"; while at the same time, answering these questions constituted the main purpose of the study and determined the scope of the study. In addition, the similarities and differences in the energy security policies of Venezuela and Iran, their energy resources, and the energy-oriented relations they have developed with various countries were also included in the scope of the study. In this context, although the scope of the study was quite broad, issues such as Venezuela's natural gas policies and its relations with the EU were excluded from the scope of the study due to the lack of sufficient information during the data collection process.