The US policy towards Iran is a part and parcel of its broader policy towards the Middle East and the Arabian (Persian) Gulf in particular. Most of the American targets, whether in the Middle East or Asia, are related to Iran, due to its possession of the military and geostrategic location that qualifies it to be an influential regional power in the future. Iran represents one of the challenges facing the United States, prompted the latter to deal with it according to constants and determinants, regardless the various US administration, which aimed at containing Iran and eliminating the threat that it could impose on its interests in the region.
The paper aims to identify the position that Iran occupies in the strategy of the United States of America and to clarify the determinants of American foreign policy, which highlight the points of convergence and divergence in the US-Iranian relations. A special attention is given to the nuclear file and sanctions that are considered as the factors affecting the domestic political and economic situation, as well as Iran’s foreign policy. The authors adhere to the theories of the balance of power and regional security complexes, the principle that the foreign policy of a state is dictated by the logic of the international system and the distribution of force among states. The structural and systemic approach, as well as the historical methodology are used in order to formulate idea about the past and present of Iranian-American relations.

The article considers publicly available corpus of texts presented in the internet, characterises and considers the potential of corpus linguistics for analysing the development of scientific trends, discourse and changes in the field of terminology. A dataset based on a corpus of texts of scientific articles in a petroleum transport trade journal and the Google Books Corpus is presented. The dataset allows us to examine changes in term usage frequencies from 1940 to 2019.
The results of analyses of term usage frequencies are presented, and a comparison is made between changes in the technology industry and the development of key vocabulary. The results show that studies made using data from corpuses of scientific and technical texts have good potential for understanding trends in technological development and the dynamics of change in industry and terminology.

The article presents a statistical analysis of the activities of science cities in 2022 of implementation measures of socio-economic development strategies and compliance with the requirements for the status of “science city”. The disadvantages of the ongoing monitoring of the activities of science cities are discovered. Additional monitoring indicators that allow to conduct systematic analysis of the activities of science cities with the subsequent development of recommendations for their further development are proposed. A conclusion is made about the dynamics of the development of science cities and the need to use additional indicators for assessing the activities of science cities.

The purpose of the work. Analysis of the features of digitalization of the states of the Middle East and North Africa. Results. The tools and mechanisms of digital development of the Arab states of the region, the specifics of regulating processes in the digital environment are described, indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of digitalization are given, the level of digitalization and its trends for the states under consideration are revealed. Conclusions. Many Arab countries in the region have launched basic digital transformation initiatives. Individual countries have made progress in the development of digitalization and the digital market. Efforts to promote innovation in the Middle East and North Africa face a number of challenges, including digital gaps and differentiation between countries and industries. It can be recommended to make greater use of international cooperation in the digital sphere.

The article explores the growing importance of technologies in intercultural communication in the context of modern business, with an emphasis on their role in facilitating negotiations with foreign partners. The popular video conferencing platforms are analyzed. Recommendations on the use of video conferencing platforms for business negotiations are given. Conclusions. The integration of virtual tools into intercultural business communication increases the efficiency and quality of negotiations with foreign partners. Diversification of communication channels, investments in employee training, as well as the establishment of clear protocols for virtual negotiations contribute to the successful conduct of international business negotiations.

The purpose. To reveal the potential of using crowdfunding for marketing purposes. The paper considers the concept of crowdfunding, the history of its emergence, the formation of its modern model as a result of digitalization, describes the modern model of crowdfunding and identifies the benefits that startups get from using it as a marketing strategy. Result. It was revealed that the use of crowdfunding as a marketing strategy provides startups with a number of advantages due to the synergistic effect that achieved due to the convergence within crowdfunding of digital and traditional forms of marketing.