American strategic culture and re-securitizing of Iran during the Trump administration

The US strategic culture has always been fueled by the involvement of a set of political and military actors who advised the US president based on their experiences, ideas, thoughts and perceptions of security threats and US accountability and responses. During the Trump administration, with the growing role of anti-Iranian forces in the structure of the US decision making in security issues, the US strategic culture has undergone changes that are of great importance to Iran. Given the tension between Iran and the US, securitizing of Iran can have important outcomes for Iran. Accordingly, the main question of the study is whether the change in some of the elements that feed the US strategic culture, can lead to Iran’s re-securitizing? In fact, the purpose of this study is to examine the sources of the development of the re-securitization discourse of Iran in the formation of the US strategic culture. Using the first-hand content analysis method, this study analyzes the views toward Iran, from the US strategic culture point of view during the Trump administration, and examines the components of Iran’s re-securitizing project. It was hypothesized that the Trump’s securitizing discourse, brings Iran into “ antagonist others “ form, but in specifying “preferred self” it is disturbed and ambiguous; therefore, the othering relations between self / other is not properly and clearly formed. Consequently, this discourse cannot appropriately perform its main function of temporary fixing the meaning of re-securitizing Iran