Trump’s Threats Against Iran Exposes Continuity of US Agenda
By Brian Berletic – Apr 3, 2025
The Trump administration has given Iran a two-month ultimatum for a new nuclear deal, as part of a longstanding U.S. strategy to isolate and weaken Iran in the region.
US President Donald Trump has recently sent a “letter” to Iran’s leadership providing it with a two-month deadline regarding a new “nuclear deal” – this after President Trump during his first term in office in 2018 unilaterally and baselessly withdrew from the previous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and as the US builds up military forces as a direct threat to Iran’s government.
The US is the only nation on Earth in human history to use nuclear weapons against another nation – twice
While President Trump has suggested drastic measures may be applied if Iran doesn’t meet the deadline, neither he nor anyone in his administration has explained under what authority the US has created this deadline, with what authority it intends to enforce it with, or how the threat of this war of aggression differs from the long line of US wars of aggression President Trump campaigned for office vowing to end.
The Trump administration is posing as if its primary motivation is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as part of a wider narrative regarding US leadership in maintaining peace and stability worldwide. In reality, this most recent escalation is part of a wider US policy spanning multiple presidential administrations aimed at dismantling Iran’s network of allies across the region, isolating Iran, before pursuing regime change operations against Iran itself.
With the removal of a sovereign Iran in the Middle East, the US can advance a decades-spanning agenda of establishing and maintaining primacy both over the Middle East and well beyond it – an agenda that has served in actuality as the single greatest threat to peace and stability worldwide.
If Real – Iranian Nuclear Weapons Would Be Rational, Not RadicalÂ
It should be noted that the US is the only nation on Earth in human history to use nuclear weapons against another nation – twice. Throughout post-WW2 history, the US has considered using nuclear weapons again – including against North Korea, China, Vietnam, and even Afghanistan. This, combined with a long history of conventional wars of aggression, makes the US the most dangerous nuclear-armed nation on Earth – its belligerence a key factor in driving nations like China and North Korea to develop and expand their nuclear programs in the first place.
Regarding Iran specifically, the US has created a decades-spanning national security threat to Tehran including regime change in 1953 as part of Operation Ajax, decades of economic sanctions meant to strangle Iran’s economy, the sponsoring of armed opposition groups inside Iran including listed terrorist organizations, as well as backing proxy wars against Iran – most notably the deadly 8 year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, as well as proxy wars against Iranian allies arraying Israel, Al-Qaeda*, and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS*) against Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Syria, Iranian-friendly militias in Iraq, as well as Ansar Allah in Yemen.
The US has also invaded and destroyed nations bordering Iran to the east and to the west – beginning with Afghanistan in 2001 and then Iraq beginning in 2003. US forces remain in Iraq to this day.
In the last several years, the US and its proxies have successfully destroyed Hezbollah’s senior leadership in Lebanon, toppled the Syrian government, and is conducting a bombing campaign against Ansar Allah in Yemen.
Were Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, it would be more rational than “radical” – a response to US military aggression that has ravaged the Middle East and has openly and constantly threatened Iran itself. Despite Iran’s status as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States – through serial acts of military aggression against non-nuclear armed states – has created a geopolitical environment voiding the core objectives of the treaty. The world cannot eliminate nuclear weapons if the US is committed to creating threats requiring nuclear deterrence.
What’s even more telling are the conclusions reached by US policymakers themselves amid the pages of papers and reports published over the years used to guide US decision-making regarding Iran itself and the wider Middle East, including the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and the certainty they would be used defensively, not offensively – threatening only the continuation of US interference and that of its proxies in the region.
Among these papers is the RAND Corporation’s 2009 “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent” report.
In it, it states:
Iran’s strategy is largely defensive, but with some offensive elements. Iran’s strategy of protecting the regime against internal threats, deterring aggression, safeguarding the homeland if aggression occurs, and extending influence is in large part a defensive one that also serves some aggressive tendencies when coupled with expressions of Iranian regional aspirations. It is in part a response to U.S. policy pronouncements and posture in the region, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iranian leadership takes very seriously the threat of invasion given the open discussion in the United States of regime change, speeches defining Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and efforts by U.S. forces to secure base access in states surrounding Iran.
Regarding nuclear weapons specifically, the same report would state:
Others have argued that Iran will seek to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies on deploying, posturing, and targeting nuclear weapons, believing that the mere acquisition of the bomb (or even nuclear technology itself) will be a sufficient psychological deterrent. Press statements, writings in military journals, and other glimpses into Iranian thinking on this issue appear to support the conclusion that Tehran regards nuclear weapons as powerful psychological assets but poor warfighting tools.
It would also state:
The actual military components of this deterrence strategy include, most obviously, the drive for an indigenous enrichment capability and a potential nuclear weapon; short- and medium-range ballistic missiles; asymmetric warfare and terrorism; and popular mobilization to defend the homeland, should an invasion occur. While this may appear to Western observers as a push for hegemony, Tehran likely sees it as a multilayered form of strategic defense that extends deep into the enemy’s camp and encompasses a variety of political, military, and economic levers.
The report, commissioned by the US Air Force, reveals Iran’s existing strategic weapons including long-range missiles and possibly biological and chemical weapons, are used as a deterrence, not as offensive weapons. The report notes that these weapons remain under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which has prevented these weapons from proliferating into the hands of other state or non-state actors.
Since 2009, Iran has developed its strategic long-range missile arsenal even further. Following 2024 Israeli strikes on an Iranian consulate in Syria and an Israel stand-off missile strike on Iran itself – Iran demonstrated tremendous restraint in the use of these missiles – confirming the conclusions of the RAND Corporation’s paper that Iran is far from the “radical” regime Western governments – including the current Trump administration – and media depict it as.
The RAND Corporation assumed that any nuclear weapons developed by Iran would likewise be used purely as a deterrence – falling under the control of the IRGC or a similar organization to ensure they continued to serve that purpose.
Provoking War with Iran Specifically Because Iran Prefers PeaceÂ
Another report published the same year by the Brookings Institution titled “Which Path to Persia?” not only confirmed the RAND Corporation’s conclusions that Iran sought to avoid conflict with the US and Israel, it went as far as suggesting the US would need to goad Iran into a conflict to provoke the type of large-scale conflict necessary to diminish Iranian strategic capabilities and even lead to regime change in Tehran itself.
At one point, the Brookings paper would explain:
…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)Â
The use of a “deal” to depict the US as seeking “diplomacy” the US itself would sabotage and cite the failure of as a pretext to increase economic and military pressure on Iran was also explained in detail:
In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.
At one point, Brookings experts worried that even with a direct US or Israeli strike on Iran, Iran might still not respond, giving a pretext for wider and more destructive conflict with Iran:
It would not be inevitable that Iran would lash out violently in response to an American air campaign, but no American president should blithely assume that it would not.
The report continues:
However, because many Iranian leaders would likely be looking to emerge from the fighting in as advantageous a strategic position as possible, and because they would likely calculate that playing the victim would be their best route to that goal, they might well refrain from such retaliatory missile attacks.
These documents not only reveal a consistent US strategy of regime change, covert action, and military pressure, they also admit that the “threat” Iran poses is linked more to impeding US impunity in the Middle East rather than any real national security threat to either the US itself or its proxies including Israel.
Even as US policy papers like those published by the RAND Corporation and the Brookings Institution lay out plans to target, undermine, and overthrow Iran’s political order, it is admitted within their pages that the very pretexts cited by US administrations regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions or the “threat” Iran poses to the US and the rest of the world are deliberate and malicious fabrications.
The “threat” the current Trump administration claims Iran and its allies pose to the region and the world are likewise fabrications and a continuation of this long-standing US policy.
Avoiding War Requires Addressing the US as the Actual Threat to PeaceÂ
If the US genuinely wanted to avoid another catastrophic war in the Middle East, it would address the primary cause of regional conflict – US policy itself. The US would end its support of proxies like Israel waging Washington’s endless proxy wars against its neighbors, and America’s own illegal military aggression and economic sanctions against Iran and its allies, and work with the region as partners rather than invaders and occupiers.
For those imagining the US under the Trump administration seeks “peace” with Russia in Ukraine, the very fact that the US is openly seeking to target Iran with military aggression demonstrates its desire to not only collapse Iran, but collapse the multipolar world order Iran serves as one of several major pillars holding it up. Russia, China, and India are 3 other major pillars the US would seek to bring multipolarism crashing down upon with the destruction of Iran. In this context, US “peace” negotiations with Russia are simply a means of pausing a proxy war the US has been losing for 3 years, to defeat the key powers of multipolarism in detail rather than all at once.
Because the US will continue speeding toward conflict in the Middle East putting at risk multipolarism worldwide – only through cooperation across the emerging multipolar world order can the conditions be created that first inhibit US aggression abroad, and then isolate the US geopolitically within its borders until the special interests driving current US policy are displaced by interests prepared to cooperate with the rest of the world rather than impose themselves upon it.
*-banned in Russia
Brian Berletic
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer who hosts The New Atlas; former US marine officer. For over ten years he wrote under the pseudonym 'Tony Cartalucci.'
