The false binary at the heart of Trump’s Iran strategy

For months, policymakers in Washington have portrayed the U.S. nuclear standoff with Iran as an either/or situation: Either Tehran agrees to curb its nuclear program, or the United States will attack it. U.S. President Donald Trump continues to warn of violent consequences if Iran spurns an agreement, claiming that only two alternatives exist for dismantling Iranian nuclear facilities—“blow them up nicely or blow them up viciously.”

But this is a false binary—merely a rhetorical device designed to manufacture urgency to make U.S. military threats against Iran more credible and, possibly, to justify a potential war to the American public.

Read at Foreign Policy

Author

Rosemary
Kelanic

Director, Middle East Program

Defense Priorities