Iran’s regional strategy, shifting dynamics, and U.S. relations

As tensions in the Middle East persist, understanding Iran’s strategies and the implications for global diplomacy has never been more critical

Vali R. Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has spent years studying the U.S.-Iran relationship. Right now, as he tries to understand the Trump administration’s posture toward Iran, he’s watching what the president is not saying as much as what he does say.

“From when he was running for president during his first term to when he got elected in 2016, he said that he was going to come out with a nuclear deal—but this time he was silent for a long time until this week,” Nasr said. “However, his character hasn’t changed, he was not silent about other things, so I think that is a big signal,” he said.

For Nasr, the Majid Khadduri professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs, the omission says a lot. He spoke about Iran’s current position on the world stage, the evolving dynamics in the Middle East, and what to expect during the second Trump administration.

Iran’s position on the world stage changed dramatically in 2024. Can you walk us through what changed?

To understand 2024, we have to look further back. The turning point came with the [first] Trump administration and efforts to put Iran back on its heels under maximum economic pressure, ostensibly to get Iran to sign a more rigorous nuclear deal. However, the Iranians understood it to be an effort by the U.S. to break down its capabilities and bring about regime change. This led Iran to become more aggressive regionally, building up its proxies and military capabilities to put pressure on the U.S.

This took a turn after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. The first year after Hamas’s attack, it looked like Iran was in a strong position. Its proxies put Israel on the defensive and Israel looked shell-shocked, having lost their aura of invincibility. It appeared as though Israel had lost the battle to defeat Hamas, despite massive bombings in the Gaza Strip. That changed when Israel pulled a massive intelligence coup on Hezbollah, killing a lot of their leaders, including the head of the organization, Hassan Nasrallah.

The big turning point came when the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which was an ally of Iran and a critical nexus between Iran and Hezbollah, collapsed, forcing Iran to leave Syria precipitously. This was a major setback for Iran—not only symbolically, but because it meant Iran wouldn’t be able to easily rearm or protect Hezbollah, and in turn, Iran could no longer deter Israeli actions via Hezbollah. Within a short period, we went from seeing Iran as the dominant regional power to Israel regaining the upper hand.

However, domestically Iran is not different. Significant uprisings by young women due to the enforcement of compulsory hijabs were a major blow to the regime—people actually thought that it was about to collapse. But after that, which ended early in 2023, Iran got neither stronger, nor weaker, internally. Being kicked out of the Levant was a big loss to Iran, both in terms of deterrence against Israel, as well as in terms of its prestige in the region. Now, the most important thing for Iran is what happens with the Trump administration. What path will they take? Is President Trump open to what Israel wants, which is an attack on Iran’s nuclear program? Or does the Trump administration want to go down the path of maximum economic sanctions against Iran? Or are they open to diplomatic negotiations?

What posture is Iran taking toward the Trump administration?

President Trump kept his cards very close to his chest until this week, and even now his policy is not fully clear. Early on, some members of his campaign pushed for a return to maximum pressure, but they were quickly sidelined. For instance, [former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs] Brian Hook was the first person to say that maximum pressure was going to be back on Iran, and he was fired by Trump. Trump has only said he doesn’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, he used the term “maximum pressure” publicly only recently to sign a memo to pledge continuing it but then said he was doing so reluctantly and with hope that he would not have to implement it. 

There have even been reports of contact between Elon Musk and the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations—but no one knows what Trump is thinking. He said he wants Iran to succeed, that he wants a nuclear peace with Iran and offered to talk to Iran’s president. Some are beginning to come to the conclusion that Trump is not likely to go down the path of war with Iran. He tweeted as much on Truth Social. 

His choice of officials in the Pentagon and State Department doesn’t suggest that he is keen on military conflict. The possibility of economic sanctions on Iran is still open, and the president has not said no to diplomatic negotiations.

What will you be watching for over the next few months?

I think if Trump was going to immediately go after Iran, he would have said something by now. But he’s said more about Greenland and Denmark and what he is going to do to Mexico and Canada than he has said about Iran. From when he was running for president during his first term to when he got elected in 2016, he said that he was going to come out with a nuclear deal—but this time he is silent. However, his character hasn’t changed, he is not silent about other things, so I think that is a big signal.

There could be a willingness from the two sides to talk, but that doesn’t mean it is going to be successful. It is my gut feeling that we are going to see some form of diplomatic opening happening, so that is something I will watch for. It is up to Trump to say clearly who is in charge of the Iran file. But there also could be negotiations happening privately.

Why do you think President Trump’s posture has changed?

I think there were lessons learned from the first term. His approach to Iran in the first term didn’t work—it didn’t bring Iran back to the table, it brought Iran and the United States close to war. Some of his hostility towards [former Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo, [former National Security Advisor John] Bolton, and Brian Hook, who are the architects of that aggressive policy with Iran from the first term, may have indicated he wants to distance himself from that and that he wants to pass the responsibility for the failed first term onto them. I also think his team would say many people who reflect this side of MAGA are uninterested in war and more anti-war. Trump has clearly said he wants to wage economic war, but not war with bullets.

“I think there were lessons learned from the first term. His approach to Iran in the first term didn’t work—it didn’t bring Iran back to the table, it brought Iran and the United States close to war.”

It is suggested that he has priorities that are more important to him than Iran. He wants to focus on China, and a domestic agenda, and he doesn’t want to follow a policy that would entangle the United States in the Middle East for the next four years. He seems to not want to change the regime, but instead, he is interested in a deal that would prevent Iran from becoming a spoiler of the entire Trump agenda.

What is your new book, “Iran’s Grand Strategy of Political History,” about?

There’s this common perception that Iran is driven purely by religious ideology and that it wants to defeat the United States and dominate the region. My book argues there’s a much more nuanced view of the world. It’s not all about religion and it’s not all about war with the West. Rather, it’s about the anxieties that Iran has regarding its security. Iran has viewed the U.S. as a threat to its survival, so it is following a strategy to persuade the U.S. to leave the region and create breathing room for the Islamic Republic.

It is important to add that in the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the regime and the country are not separate. Outside of Iran and within the U.S. government, there is this distinction made between the regime’s rulers and the country, but in the eyes of Iran’s rulers, they are the country’s rulers and spokesmen. So what they perceive as a threat to the regime is no different than a threat to Iran itself.