Mohammad Eslami, Christian Kaunert
Bringing peace back to the Middle East, securing the release of all Israeli hostages, and normalizing relations between Israel and its neighbors have been among Donald Trump’s most prominent election promises in his second-term bid for the presidency (Rynhold, 2024). However,
Iran appears to be the primary obstacle to Trump’s strategic goals in the Middle East—in particular its nuclear program, which is coupled with its expanding drone and ballistic missile capabilities and its support for regional proxies. The Trump administration has expressed a strong commitment to curbing Iran’s military ambitions,
not only to prevent the development of nuclear weapons but also to restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program, military drone capabilities, and proxy networks (Eslami, 2021, 2022). To achieve this, Trump has emphasized a hardline approach,
including the threat of military operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities and the continuation of economic sanctions as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign (Saleh and Yazdanshenas 2024).
At the same time as Trump’s pressure campaign, Iran has also been engaged in a long-standing shadow war with Israel, which has significantly shaped its security doctrine, causing Iran to engage in indirect confrontations through regional proxies and asymmetric warfare.
The escalation of hostilities, particularly after the Hamas-Israeli conflict that started on October 7, 2023, has seen Iran and Israel move from covert operations to direct military confrontations (Mens, 2024).
These advancements raise pressing questions about whether Iran’s growing defense capabilities will eventually lead to its emergence as a nuclear-armed state and how Trump’s second administration will respond to such a development.
No comments:
Post a Comment