THE UNITED STATES’ FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS IRAN: THE ROLE OF DONALD TRUMP’S IDIOSYNCRATIC FACTORS IN THE CORRELATION WITH THE UNITED STATES’ FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING PROCESS IN WITHDRAWING FROM JOINT COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF ACTION (JCPOA)

Abstract

major significant shift on how it addresses the Iranian nuclear threat. In 2018, US under Donald Trump administration decided to withdraw from Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that just made in 2015 by US, Iran and P5+1 countries to address Iranian nuclear weapon development. Having said that, this paper aims to analyze the role of Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic factors in the correlation with US’ decision to withdraw from JCPOA deal. By using Jerrold Post framework, this thesis explores Trump’s personal background, personality, worldview, and leadership style. This analysis will be connected with the framework of Herman’s Leadership Type Analysis to discuss its correlation with US decision to withdraw from the deal. This research found several main findings. First, Trump’s personality highlights his high level of self narcissism, lack of trust, and binary thinking made him believe that the deal made US losing to Iran. Second, his background in business and military shaped him to be an ambitious and aggressive person, which led him to withdraw the deal despite resistance from US internal administration and international allies. Third, his worldview reveals his acknowledgment of world strategic competition and the importance of military and economy power as the main tools in achieving US interest. Thus, instead of making a deal, Trump believes that US should have tripled the sanction to stop Iran nuclear weapon ambition. Lastly, his leadership style reveals that he has shaped the decision making process to be in favor of his own instinct and his own values despite political constraint in the US foreign policy structure.