Introduction:
Today, with the expansion of the volume of political, economic and cultural relations or various transactions between peoples of societies and countries, diplomacy has gone beyond its traditional scope in terms of its tools and content and, in addition to the governmental and official dimension, includes other dimensions. Because with the increase in the number of political parties in the world, party governance has become one of the common governance models. Political systems with political parties have been able to take advantage of the increasing advantages of parties and use their capacities in regional and international developments beyond national activism. Parties may affect the foreign relations of their countries through direct intervention in both the formulation of foreign policy strategies and diplomatic methods. In this regard, party diplomacy can be referred to as an important part of modern diplomacy and international relations. The importance of political party positions in foreign policy and how such positions are announced and implemented in foreign policy processes remains largely unknown.
Materials & Methods:
In recent decades, the role of parties and think tanks in foreign policy has always increased. China, as one of the largest global economies, has linked its continued growth with the One Belt, One Road initiative and the extensive cooperation of the Communist Party of China with parties around the world. Party unions in Europe also play a direct role in the foreign policy process of this union and European governments, or Turkey, after the Justice and Development Party came to power, adopted an active regional foreign policy alongside its traditional Western policy and showed that it wanted to play a more active role in the region (Kohkan and Gorji, 2016: 121). Therefore, the foreign relations of parties are effective on the foreign policy of countries, and just as they declare their foreign relations priorities for the architecture and engineering of foreign policy during the party's rule over the country, they are concerned with the realization of foreign policy within the framework of party diplomacy. In this regard, party diplomacy deals with the relationship between two or more parties and the methods of interaction, cooperation and communication between leaders, members and supporters.
The methods and tools of party diplomacy can be considered as follows:
1- Governments, legislative assemblies and local governance:
A- Determining the government's foreign policy priorities through party factions and government commissions
B- Parliamentary friendship groups and local councils
C- Selecting the cadres of the foreign policy apparatus
2- Media cooperation
3- Chambers of commerce and trade and development cooperation
4- Strategic partnerships in international projects
5- Formation of regional and international unions and cooperation
6- Cultural and social affairs: such as language, ethnicity and race, religion and education, religious schools and training
7- Establishing offices and recruiting and communicating with party members abroad

Discussion & Result:
It is obvious that in the conditions of party instability and lack of party governance in Iran, there are no effective signs of parties playing a role in party diplomacy. However, due to the minimal establishment of a party system with very limited actors and activists, for the level of investigation, we can only focus on the foreign relations of parties, and among the existing parties, there are few reports on the foreign relations of a small number of parties such as the Participatory Party, the National Trust, the Workers' House, and most of all the Islamic Coalition Party. According to these reports, mutual invitations to attend party congresses have been the most important action of Iranian parties in interacting with parties in other countries.
Political parties and organizations, as generators of intellectual, political, and class movements, are efficient tools in various fields, especially in the field of politics, and have played important roles in various developments that have taken place in Iran. In this regard, the Reform government had defined one of its political missions in foreign policy as interaction with parties in regional and global countries. This issue was accepted to some extent as an approach, as the House of Parties also attended foreign meetings of parties and defended the positions of the Islamic Republic in the region and the world. In the Participation Party, this was also one of the missions of the Political Bureau to meet and discuss with representatives of parties who traveled to Iran for various reasons. (Shamsi and Nabi, 2012: 114)
During the 11th government (Rouhani), more than 10 invitations were sent by foreign parties to the Secretary General of the National Trust Party for travel and meetings, and Karroubi traveled to China and Saudi Arabia during this period. The sending of special messages from Bashar al-Assad and Jalal Talabani, the presidents of Syria and Iraq (the Syrian Arab Socialist Baath Party and the Patriotic Union of Iraqi Kurdistan) was one of the prominent aspects of the National Trust Party Congress (Haqshenas, 2017: 2).
However, the issue is slightly different with the Islamic Coalition Party, and the level of these relations is broader. In recent years, it has had foreign relations with 220 parties with different political orientations from 52 countries around the world. In order to organize the party’s foreign relations, it has foreseen the International Affairs Department in its organizational and organizational structure, and this department is present at the highest levels of policy-making and decision-making in the party. So far, dozens of high-ranking party delegations consisting of the Secretary General, provincial secretaries, deputies, members of the Political Council, and student and women’s organizations, as well as media and educational activists, have met and discussed with their counterparts in other parties.
Conclusion:
The foreign relations of parties in the world have been an inseparable part of their function from the past to the present. This function has varied in proportion to the level of importance of the parties on the one hand and the position of the parties in different political systems. The history of studies shows that at times and in cases the impact of party diplomacy has exceeded that of governments, and in some cases this diplomacy has caused fundamental changes in governments and the formation of governments. Therefore, the position of party diplomacy cannot be reduced to a part of public diplomacy or its deep influence on official diplomacy cannot be ignored. By accepting the premise of the distinction between the two concepts of "party system" and "party governance" in the political system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it can be said that to the extent that the role of party in the Iranian policy-making system is distorted, neglected, and ineffective, this situation can also be generalized to the field of foreign policy-making. Most of the country's parties lack any activity in party diplomacy. The only notable exception is the Islamic Coalition Party, whose foreign relations performance can be assessed in some defined areas of party diplomacy, but no trace of this performance can be traced or marked in the area of ​​foreign policymaking.