The following statement by H.E. Abolfazl Pasandideh, the ambassador of Iran to Mexico, was made available to EIR on March 25. Ambassador Pasandideh recently addressed the March 13, 2026 meeting of the International Peace Coalition.
In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.
It is a pleasure to address you today on a concept that, despite having been introduced more than two decades ago, still retains significant analytical and practical relevance in light of current transformations in the international system: the “Dialogue Among Civilizations.”
In the late 1990s, this idea emerged as a response to the growing prominence of “civilizational conflict” narratives—most notably articulated in the works of Samuel P. Huntington. It sought to offer an alternative paradigm: replacing identity-driven confrontation with interaction and mutual understanding, within a framework better suited to capturing the cultural and historical complexities of international relations.
However, in the early years of the twenty-first century, this approach did not receive sufficient political investment from some key global actors. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the dominant discourse in U.S. foreign policy shifted toward the securitization of identities and the construction of normative dichotomies. A notable example was the 2002 statement by George W. Bush, in which certain countries—including Iran—were labeled as part of an “axis of evil.” Such language, rather than opening space for dialogue, contributed to deepening mistrust and reinforcing divisions.
From an analytical perspective, this discursive shift had several important consequences:
First, it strengthened patterns of “othering” at the international level;
Second, it reduced the space for normative diplomacy and intercultural dialogue;
And third, it lent legitimacy to unilateral approaches in certain policy domains.
In this context, it is worth considering a counterfactual proposition: had the idea of the Dialogue Among Civilizations been seriously pursued and operationalized in 2001—through institutional mechanisms and sustained political commitment—the trajectory of many developments over the past two decades might have been different. It is plausible that some of the cycles of mistrust, costly interventions, and escalating conflicts that have shaped the international system—particularly in the Middle East—could have been prevented, or at least more effectively managed.
