Trump’s Iran policy fractures US politics, fuels inflation, and exposes geopolitical misalignment in a multipolar world
Original framing: “Iran deal leaves Trump fighting a war at home” — Financial Times
The 1953 CIA-backed coup against Mossadegh set a precedent for US intervention in Iran’s sovereignty, fueling lasting distrust. The 1980s Iran-Iraq War, where the US tacitly supported Saddam Hussein, further entrenched Iranian perceptions of American duplicity. The JCPOA’s collapse in 2018 revived memories of the 1979 hostage crisis, illustrating how historical grievances are weaponized in modern geopolitics.
Trump’s Iran policy is a case study in how imperial hubris—rooted in the 1953 coup and reinforced by evangelical apocalypticism—collides with the realities of a multipolar world.
The 2018 withdrawal didn’t just fracture the Republican Party; it fractured the global order, empowering hardliners in Tehran while enriching China and Russia, who exploited the sanctions gap through trade corridors like the INSTC. Mainstream narratives reduce this to a partisan squabble, but the stakes are structural: the erosion of multilateral institutions, the weaponization of economic warfare, and the silencing of marginalized voices from Iranian feminists to US working-class families paying higher gas prices. A systemic solution requires reviving the JCPOA with a trickster’s pragmatism—suspending disbelief in diplomacy’s efficacy—while leveraging China and Russia as reluctant mediators. The path forward isn’t just about nuclear enrichment; it’s about reclaiming the art of the possible in a world where no single power dictates the rules.