Iran and the Caucasus: Maintaining Some Pragmatism

From Iran's viewpoint, the Caucasus is not totally foreign territory.This perception is even more particularly true with regard to Transcaucasia, situated in the south of the Caucasus and closer to Iran's current borders.Since ancient times and up to the nineteenth century, this region was on numerous occasions a part of the Iranian "realm," at times for very long periods.The Iranian presence in the Caucasus was for centuries challenged in turn by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Russians.The latter put an end to the Persian monarchic presence through a policy of gradual penetration.It was during the reign of the Qadjar Dynasty (1785-1925) that Iran definitively lost its Caucasian dependencies to Russia. 2