In our editorial The Threshold of a Regional Crisis, we wrote that the spread of the war to Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which have so far not been directly involved, could transform the landscape of the US-Israeli war. It can now be said that the US is seeking to put Iran in direct confrontation with the entire world, and this is clearly evident in Trump’s recent remarks at the United Nations.

In his remarks, he initially claimed that Iran’s large stockpiles of missiles, drones and military equipment pose a threat to countries in the region, and that the Islamic Republic “regime” has killed 70,000 of its own citizens, thereby seeking to convey that the Iranian government is both a threat to the region and to its own people. This theme was repeated in Netanyahu’s speech. “Regime” is a keyword that appears repeatedly in the language of Western officials and media and forms part of the psychological operation aimed at justifying the US-Israeli aggression, portraying the aggression against Iran as an “operation” against a political regime. This is a continuation of the same media and semantic campaign that has been waged against Iran’s national sports teams in recent years, portraying them as representatives of the regime rather than representatives of Iran. Words in foreign policy are not merely tools for conveying information; they redefine the actors, audiences, responsibilities and legitimacy involved. The fact that the repeated use of “regime” can accentuate the boundary between “government” and “nation” is noteworthy from the perspective of discourse analysis.

Trump then takes the claim further by referring to missiles with European-range capabilities and asserting that Iran’s conventional missile capability could have provided cover for developing a nuclear capability. But the story does not end there. Another important point can be seen in the logic of his speech: Iran is not merely a security issue; it is also a global energy issue.

Trump seeks to frame the crisis through the triad of “Iran-global energy market-global economy” in order to move the threshold of the crisis beyond the US-Iran confrontation and place Iran in opposition to the world at large. Therefore, Trump’s remarks must be analyzed as more than political rhetoric. This is an effort to build an international coalition, because energy security generally makes it easier to bring Europe, Asian powers, shipping companies, financial markets and governments dependent on energy imports into alignment.

What we have said before is that Iran must not allow the transition of the crisis to a “threshold of global pain” to be attributed to Iran. This is precisely what Trump sought to achieve in his recent speech. It is therefore not unreasonable to consider the possibility that the US is not seeking to bring the affair to an end, but may also be seeking to intensify and prolong it, allowing itself to stand at the heart of global energy while putting pressure on the masses of people around the world who depend on fuel and portraying Iran as responsible for all of it. From this perspective, the notion that Trump is seeking an understanding with Iran becomes less convincing. He may not want such an understanding at all, because it could serve as a tool for asserting dominance over the world and making the world dependent on the US. His remarks began by referring to the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States, something that popular American political culture regards as one of the milestones of human history. His opening message was very clear: America has become powerful again. He exaggerated the state of the United States in several areas: the US economy is powerful and a model for the world; American technology is at the highest level; the country is the force that supplies the world with energy; American power is growing; and America’s future is very bright. This constitutes a complete discursive framework that resonates with the roar of American bombers during the reception ceremony for the Chinese president and forms part of the US hegemonic discourse.

From this perspective, the destruction of the infrastructure of the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf is not strategically significant for the US and Israel either. Recognizing this point could create a new economic and security opportunity for these countries. If these countries possess sufficient independence of action for Iran to persuade them to enter into a major economic and security pact, a paradigm shift would take place in the region, because both their infrastructure would be protected and the siege of Iran would become ineffective. An economic and security alliance with Iran, although it has always seemed out of reach, now has greater justification given the threat that has spread to everyone from all directions. Such an alliance would render the US presence irrelevant and would, in practice, benefit all countries except Israel.

Another point in Trump’s speech was that it began from the outset not with a discussion of the United Nations, but with a redefinition of America’s position in the world. His logic is that America’s domestic strength generates its international power and enables it to ensure global energy security. He then presents the US-led global program more explicitly: Trump calls on other countries to join the US and impose complete economic isolation on Iran so that, in his words, Iran will stop attacks on commercial shipping, abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorist groups. He claims that if countries around the world unite on this issue, economic pressure on Iran will increase and, ultimately, oil prices could also decline. In reality, the US is seeking global cooperation to exert economic pressure on Iran in order to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. Through a semantic reading of Trump’s speech, the key word “negotiation” undergoes a transformation in meaning throughout his address: by negotiation and agreement, he means Iran’s unconditional surrender. Put more technically, the structure of the conditions and pressure mechanisms he presents weakens the space for balanced negotiations and increases the likelihood that dialogue will turn into one-sided acceptance of demands. Can such conclusions about the identification of American strategic approaches really be drawn from “one speech” alone? Yes. Our claim that the speech reflects strategy is supported by a body of evidence: sanctions, military deployments, energy policy, engagement with allies, the way US officials play with market behavior, and the pattern of practical action.

Trump’s speech embodies what scholars of US foreign policy have pointed to: US foreign policy is formulated within a dogmatic framework comprising global messianism, interests, a distinctively American form of liberalism, and a pragmatism that reduces foreign policy to military operations, the “Epic Fury operation.” In Gulliver’s Captivity, Stanley Hoffmann describes American behavior in the following terms: what they mean by “international cooperation” is, in reality, cooperation by others with the US in advancing American projects. During the US attacks on Iraq and Somalia, George Bush said: “At home, the material cost of our leadership can be very high. That is why US representatives have met with many world leaders.” This is the same echo of George Bush’s voice that continues in Trump’s remarks, in which he says that if countries around the world unite on this issue, economic pressure on Iran will increase and ultimately oil prices could decline. In American politics, Trump is not an exception, but rather an expression of a rule that has existed in US foreign policy for at least a century.

US foreign policy over the past century has encompassed isolationism, multilateralism, liberal internationalism, containment, détente, interventionism, limited wars, human rights policy and competition with great powers. Within this tradition of US foreign policy, several enduring elements have remained: the claim to a global leadership role; the linkage of national interests with the language of universal values; the use of international institutions alongside unilateral action; prioritizing economic power and military operations; and efforts to shape an order that serves US interests. From these elements, historical analysis can conclude that Trump is simply continuing, without fundamental change, a century-old pattern. (See the articles published by the author in issues 59 and 61 of the Journal of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tehran.)

(Nournews)