Document Type : Original Independent Original Article
Authors
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Ayatollah Amoli Branch, Islamic Azad University, Amol, Iran.
2 Postdoctoral Researcher in International Relations Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Highlights
The U.S. foreign policy has always viewed the Iranian nuclear issue as a major threat to U.S. security, although there have been differences in how policy is implemented. After almost two decades and with long-term negotiations, this challenge finally ended in 2015 with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) during the presidency of Obama and Rouhani. The JCPOA was not only considered an important agreement regarding the expansion of nuclear weapons and global security, but more importantly, it was a model for international diplomacy because it was able to alleviate the decades-long hostility between Iran and the U.S. But the problems did not end there. To everyone's surprise, when Donald Trump won the election in 2016, the U.S. foreign policy demonstrated contradiction and confrontation with Iran; not only was the JCPOA unable to prevent, this but also it fell victim to Trump's controversial stance. Trump's foreign policy toward Iran entails issues far beyond the JCPOA, upon which he was on the brink of war with Iran with a very aggressive approach (with the assassination of Sardar Soleimani). Thus, in the chaos and anarchy that most political scholars view as the main property of Trump's foreign policy, his policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran had a remarkable consistency. This means that, without any changes or developments about Iran, Trump's policy throughout his presidency was based on pressure, aggression, and threat. The Trump administration has strategically sought to undermine Iran, putting economic pressure on it and ultimately forcing it to negotiate an increasingly wide range of issues, but this strategy of maximum pressure failed to bring Iran back to the negotiation table. Trump's tough economic sanctions to return Iran to negotiation, and Iran's attempts to withdraw the impact of those sanctions and force its return to the JCPOA agreement, have been highly controversial among them. Trump's tough economic sanctions against Iran, and Iran's efforts to remove the impact of those sanctions and force the U.S. to return to the JCPOA agreement, set the field for further conflicts, and Trump decided to withdraw for various reasons.
This research seeks to show how the triple components of capital, character, and symbolic violence in Trump's decision field, a social construction that was the product of his action and simultaneously controlled and restrained his action, shaped his behavior towards the JCPOA.
The main question is, “What factor caused Trump's social world to function and build concerning the JCPOA? Assuming the JCPOA is revived in the Biden era, what scenario will await it if Trump regains power?”
Compared to many papers written about Trump's approach to the JCPOA, the innovation of this work lies in that it adapts a social science theory, namely decision field theory, to explain the problem. Therefore, a clear difference between this article and the previous ones is that it considers a constructive environment in which internal and external factors simultaneously act to expose the reality of Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw from the JCPOA.
Research Method
We collected data using secondary research methods and based on articles, books, and specialized websites on international relations. The data analysis method was descriptive-analytical.
Findings
Within the U.S., each government employs specific tactics regarding the Iranian nuclear issue according to its own conditions and strategic factors. In the same way, at the level of the influence of internal factors, Trump, as an unpredictable leader in the realm of foreign policy, adopted a more strict approach to Iran and its nuclear issue than expected. The reason was his ontological approach to Iran. In other words, Trump defined Iran as "the other" with conflicting and different values and norms that try to challenge the American hegemony. In this sense, according to Wendt, this "other" was considered an enemy whose slightest expansion of power was threatening. Therefore, it should be contained and controlled in any way, and withdrawing from the JCPOA was an important step in this process of containment. Regarding the operationalization of Trump's decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the results showed that according to Bourdieu's system, the three sides of the triangle of the decision field, i.e., capital, character, and symbolic violence, formed a construction guiding Trump's actions, and Trump as an actor reproduced this construction. In simpler words, capital produced a personality schema in Trump, which shaped a certain behavior on his part regarding the JCPOA. Through the lens of capital, Trump believed that despite the JCPOA, Iran's hostility to the values and cultural preferences of the hegemon America remains. In terms of character, he described himself as the best negotiator but failed to force Iran to return to negotiations.
Conclusion
Finally, in terms of symbolic violence, despite the initial threats of withdrawal and sanctions, I. R. Iran did not respect the prestige and dignity of the U.S. and, as a result, rejected the JCPOA as the only way. With the two possible assumptions of revitalizing the JCPOA and Trump regaining power in 2024, the results indicated that the stability of Trump's decision field over time led to the adoption of policies such as antithesis against Biden's achievements, concerns about Iran as an anti-hegemon, the continuation of the America First policy, and the perception of Iran as an enemy of identity. All this will lead to the most likely scenario, i.e., a similar behavior towards the JCPOA.
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