As the United States has undergone a tumultuous administration change, one of the most highly anticipated topics was how the new administration under Donald Trump would react to the nuclear deal. As of now, it’s gone rather poorly, with Trump taking to Twitter to threaten Iran after they tested a weapon. While the United States took it as defiance to the deal signed by Iran and other countries (which prohibits testing ballistic missiles to create a nuclear warhead), Iran insists that the missiles tested did not have the capacity to be a nuclear warhead. In addition to this, the IAEA has struck up numerous side deals in which the full details are not completely known. This lack of transparency along with the rocky history between the two nations is leading to the destruction of the scarce trust that existed.
Often times in world affairs, you can see a pattern of history repeating itself and try to piece together some idea of how a current situation will turn out. However, the tensions between Iran and the United States are seeming to be volatile and unpredictable. President Trump vowed to “tear up” the Iran Deal; however, the United States is not the only signatory on the deal, making the possibility of the deal just disappearing highly unlikely. The only other likely move would be heavy sanctions on Iran, once again…but you can’t forget that lifted sanctions were the bait for Iran to dismantle their nuclear program in the first place.
It seems that nowadays, promises were made to be broken/circumnavigated. As leaders change, it’s very easy for an administration to completely shake up the policies and put foreign relations in a totally new and different spot than they were mere months before. The largest problem, however, is the growing lack of trust and transparency, the fundamental principles of diplomacy. The second you lose that basic trust, diplomacy becomes near impossible to conduct, and tensions rise until some sort of drastic action forces change to occur.