From Iran–Israel Peace to U.S. National Security Policy

In a commentary published by Rokna, Nasrollah Tajik writes:
The publication of the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy neither reassures the people of developing countries that America’s return to isolationism will provide them an opportunity to utilize their own resources without foreign interference for the establishment of a new global order and a fairer system of relations, nor does it permit the world to be governed through effective international institutions and the cooperation of compassionate global leaders seeking to reduce inequality, prevent environmental destruction, and look beyond America’s domestic goals.

This document, which does not fully display the structure, function, and performance of issues related to U.S. national security—especially its covert national security strategy—presents only the official, administrative interpretation of a consensus among relevant agencies, strictly in line with Trump’s ideas. It nevertheless contains valuable insights regarding the United States, its objectives, and its view of the world, institutions, organizations, and the global structure of international relations and multilateralism. The document provides a useful opportunity to study significant matters given its weight in global affairs. In this commentary, I address one of its themes—its view of previous U.S. strategy documents—while leaving other points for future articles. However, one may infer from both the lines and between the lines of this document the events likely to unfold, which can be utilized in shaping Iran’s future foreign policy approaches.

The document identifies Iran as the primary destabilizing actor in the region and refers twice to Trump’s actions concerning Iran: the prospect of peace between Iran and Israel, and the weakening of Iran’s nuclear capabilities through “Midnight Hammer” operations. Yet this text is not merely a long-term roadmap for the United States. Rather, it is a mixture of aspirations, expectations, methods of achieving objectives, and the manner in which the United States seeks to impose itself on the world—combined with Trump’s record during his first term and the present one. To fulfill the slogan “America First,” the strategy employs concepts such as:
“Returning to strategic realism and ending post–Cold War globalist policies, securing and fully controlling borders and mass migration, combating drug trafficking and organized crime, strengthening cybersecurity and critical infrastructure, fostering social cohesion and countering domestic extremism, and rebuilding America’s economic and industrial power.”

This reveals Washington’s intent to prioritize strengthening the U.S. economy and protecting American citizens and domestic welfare over managing global crises.

However, Trump’s performance in this term and the deployment of U.S. resources—his administration’s primary preoccupations—such as the simmering instability in the Middle East, tariff wars, tensions with China and India, Latin America and Europe, and the war in Russia and Ukraine, demonstrate that despite the document’s emphasis on using resources to safeguard the American people, borders, and domestic welfare, and that global leadership is only meaningful when based on sustainable domestic strength, the United States continues to struggle with internal dilemmas. These aspirations have largely remained rhetorical, and Washington has not yet moved effectively toward the implementation of the document’s principles and objectives.

A review of previous U.S. National Security Strategies, which Trump criticizes and which are also criticized in this document, reveals that earlier iterations were heavily geopolitics-oriented and shaped around America’s adversaries.
In contrast, the new document assigns little weight to geopolitical matters: China and Russia—previously deemed national security threats in Trump’s 2017 strategy—are portrayed differently. China is not a geopolitical enemy but an economic partner, and Russia is characterized as Europe’s problem rather than a vital threat to the United States. Thus, economic interests dominate Washington’s outlook, aiming both to reduce security and military burdens and to fulfill the “America First” slogan.

In its foreign policy section, the document also strikes out the post–World War II institution-centered international order and the role of international organizations and multilateral cooperation—concepts scorned by Trump and his foreign policy architects. It adopts an intensely skeptical view of the international system, prioritizing independent decision-making, reducing reliance on international institutions, adopting a transactional approach toward allies, and shifting security burdens onto them. It favors a region-centric foreign policy that pivots U.S. strategic focus back to the Western Hemisphere—reflecting a partial return to pre-World War II isolationism. It also supports reducing U.S. commitments in Europe, leaving European nations to provide for their own security, prioritizing economic ties with China in Asia and the use of soft power instead of hard power, reducing military presence in the Middle East, and limiting attention to Africa with an emphasis on stability and resource management.

The document’s approach toward major powers and rivals is particularly noteworthy. China is treated as an economic partner rather than a geopolitical threat; Russia as Europe’s issue rather than a vital threat; North Korea is practically removed from the agenda and reduced to a regional nuisance that must be contained. Regarding Iran, which in previous documents was grouped with North Korea, the new strategy—while claiming Iran’s threats have diminished—focuses instead on preventing Iran from destabilizing the world.

In its preface, the document describes the aim of U.S. foreign policy as the protection of core national interests, asserting that this alone forms the foundation of the strategy. It states:
“This program begins with a precise assessment of what is desirable and the tools available—or those that can be developed—to achieve the desired outcomes. A strategy must assess, categorize, and prioritize. No country, region, issue, or ideal—no matter how valuable—can be the axis of U.S. strategy.”
Given this, it remains unclear how Washington’s absolute, unwavering support for Israel’s actions and for Netanyahu—who stands accused of genocide in Gaza—aligns with U.S. national security or how America justifies such unwavering alignment.

The document identifies four instruments of national power: the economy, the military, diplomacy, and technology. Yet it does not clarify which is prioritized. From Trump’s performance, however, it is evident that the military outweighs the other three. The U.S. economy is portrayed as the foundation of national security and the key to reshoring American manufacturing; the military as needing to become more agile, less global, and more Western Hemisphere-focused; diplomacy as operating through bilateral agreements centered on vital U.S. interests; and technology as driven by investment in artificial intelligence, new energy, and cybersecurity. Yet the document fails to specify what exactly constitutes U.S. national interests, whether Washington has defined any geographic boundaries for those interests, and the methods and costs by which these interests will be pursued. It further leaves unclear how these instruments of national power will be prioritized in interactions with other nations. Should countries, as Iran experienced, expect the U.S. military to take precedence over diplomacy—even during negotiations—as seen in Washington’s attacks on Iran’s legal, IAEA-monitored nuclear facilities?

The strategy, while criticizing previous administrations, acknowledges in its preface—under the heading What is America’s strategy? And how did “strategy” go astray?—that the United States has never truly had a “strategy”: a clear, realistic program defining the essential connection between objectives and tools.
It states:
“To ensure that the United States remains the strongest, wealthiest, most powerful, and most successful country in the world for decades to come, our nation needs a coherent and focused strategy for how to engage with the world. For this to be achieved, all Americans must understand exactly what we are doing and why.”

The document further concedes that U.S. strategies since the end of the Cold War have been unsuccessful—describing them as lists of aspirations or desirable end goals lacking clarity regarding what the United States actually seeks, often driven by vague clichés and mistaken assumptions about desired outcomes.

After the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American dominance over the world was in the nation’s interest. Yet, the affairs of other countries matter to the United States only when their actions directly threaten U.S. interests. These elites severely miscalculated America’s willingness to bear the perpetual costs of global responsibility—costs that the American public does not perceive as connected to national interests. They overestimated America’s capacity to simultaneously finance an immense welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a vast military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid apparatus. They also pursued deeply misguided and harmful bets on globalization and so-called “free trade,” which undermined the middle class and industrial base vital to U.S. economic and military superiority.

They allowed allies and partners to shift the costs of their own defense onto the American people, and at times entangled Washington in conflicts and controversies that mattered to them but were marginal—or irrelevant—to U.S. interests. They further subjected U.S. foreign policy to a web of international institutions, some driven by blatant anti-Americanism and others by transnationalism seeking to dissolve national sovereignty.

In sum, U.S. elites not only pursued an essentially undesirable and impossible goal, but in doing so weakened the very instruments needed to achieve such a goal—the character of the American nation, upon which its power, wealth, and virtue were built.

Whether these shortcomings have changed during Trump’s past term or the current one is another matter. Yet this is the reality the United States has confronted, and due to its political, economic, and military weight, it has caused confusion worldwide. Unfortunately, the document fails to address the consequences of U.S. policies for other nations and the world. For instance, while it laments the erosion of America’s middle class and industrial base, it ignores the fact that this same calamity—driven by U.S. global strategy—has afflicted numerous countries, for which Washington bears no responsibility and offers no acknowledgment or apology.

Moreover, many countries have suffered from America’s pursuit of permanent global dominance: the exploitation of their natural resources, the recycling of revenues through arms sales, the disruption of local balances, the spread of violence, war, and hegemony through coups, puppet governments, and the assassination of national figures—such as the 1953 coup in Iran. Yet the United States has undertaken no corrective action, not even symbolic accountability.

This perspective on the document and its acknowledgment of the consequences of past American strategies can serve as a foundation for a rational approach to the United States. It is essential for affected countries to utilize this text—an implicit admission by Washington—to reassess their relations and policies toward the U.S. or to take legal action against it, God willing.