Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran, a consequential use of force, is best understood as a hybrid case requiring multiple Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) frameworks. While the rational actor model initially explains the strike as a calculated effort to restore deterrence and reassert credibility against Iran's advancing missile and nuclear capabilities and resilience, this framework encounters limitations.
The administration's stated objectives were fluid, encompassing nuclear proliferation prevention, missile degradation, punishing Iran, and political transformation, complicating claims of a single, defined strategic end state. This ambiguity reflects a tendency to define military success more clearly than political success. Furthermore, Trump's foreign policy is fundamentally transactional, treating international crises as bargaining encounters. His approach, visible in trade wars against China, the European Union, Mexico, and Canada, and rhetoric regarding Greenland, aligns with coercive diplomacy, utilizing threats, pressure, and "calculated inconsistency" to create unpredictability and compel adversaries like Iran to reassess their positions.
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