US Foreign Policy toward Iran between the Obama and Trump Administrations

Abstract

The variation in the use of foreign policy tools has become a foregone conclusion when the rule of the White House is succeeded by Republicans and Democrats. We find that there is a wide debate in this range between the extents to which strict policy is used under Republican rule, with the resort to adopting a flexible policy with the rule of Democrats. As a result of the divergence of views between the two successive administrations on the rule of the United States, many differences emerged in the tools used by the two administrations in dealing with one of the most important issues that posed a serious challenge to the United States, which was dealing with the Iranian nuclear file, or in general how to deal with Iran as a country characterized by with the dominance of religious ideology over the political thought of running the state, in addition to Iran's use of its religious belief in order to strengthen its position in the region and the world. The divergence of the United States foreign policy tools towards Iran had a great impact on the world as a whole, in that it strengthened the international division in dealing with that policy between compatible and opposing ones, which undermined the unity of the international community, thus giving way to other actors, whether states or others, on international security and peace in a way that affected the political stability of some countries, especially in the Middle East.