ANALYSIS: Trump’s racist remarks about Iran are not mistakes—they are admissions

Contempt as a Negotiation Strategy

There is a school of thought—in Washington as well as in certain neoconservative think tanks—that views not knowing one’s adversary as a form of strength. Not pronouncing a foreign leader’s name correctly. Not understanding their culture. Not respecting their norms. All of this is supposedly “straight talk,” American-style candor.

In reality, it’s kamikaze diplomacy. Every cultural blunder Trump makes regarding Iran gives the hardliners in the Tehran regime exactly what they need: proof that America doesn’t respect Iran, doesn’t understand it, and isn’t trying to understand it. Every gaffe is a gift to the hawks.

Words That Close Doors

And yet, diplomacy is first and foremost a matter of words. Of nuances. Of gestures. When Kennedy resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, he spent hours trying to understand Khrushchev’s psychology. When Nixon opened the door to China, he had studied Chinese culture for months. Cultural competence was not a progressive luxury—it was a tool for geopolitical survival.

Trump has reversed this logic. Incompetence has become a trademark. And his supporters cheer, because in their worldview, understanding the other is a weakness.

Beyond Trump—A Systemic Problem

Let’s be honest: the problem didn’t start with Trump, and it won’t end with him. Orientalism—that condescending Western view of the Muslim world described by Edward Said as early as 1978—has shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades. Trump has merely stripped away the veneer.

Under Obama, the same government apparatus that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran maintained a drone program that killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen, amid near-total indifference. Under Bush, the invasion of Iraq—a country that was also blithely confused with its neighbors—was sold on lies for which no one was held accountable. The difference with Trump is that he no longer even bothers to lie intelligently.

The Perpetual Double Standard

Imagine for a moment that an Iranian leader confused Canada with the United States. That he spoke of Americans as if they were interchangeable with Mexicans. That he systematically mispronounced the names of Western leaders. The international press would cry out about incompetence. About primitivism. About proof that “those people” aren’t ready for the international stage.

When an American president does the same thing, we call it “style.”

Humiliation as Fuel

In Tehran, every mistake Trump makes is translated, analyzed, and broadcast. Iranian state media don’t even need to engage in propaganda—they simply have to quote the U.S. president. Word for word. The Islamic Republic has built its founding narrative on the humiliation it suffered at the hands of the West: the 1953 coup organized by the CIA, support for the Shah, and the silence regarding the chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein against Iranians in the 1980s.

Every racist gaffe by Trump reawakens this memory. Every instance of cultural confusion tells Iranians: “You do not exist as a distinct people. You are a generic enemy.” And this dehumanization has concrete consequences: it strengthens the hardliners, marginalizes the reformers, and makes any sincere negotiation nearly impossible.

The Spiral of Mistrust

Iranian negotiators—many of whom studied at Western universities and speak perfect English—watch this spectacle with a mixture of contempt and despair. How can you negotiate seriously with a counterpart who doesn’t even know who you are? How can you trust a country that has already betrayed you once—by unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018—and that, on top of that, confuses you with your neighbors?

And yet, peace depends on these negotiations. Millions of lives depend on the ability of these two countries to communicate with one another. But you don’t talk to someone who refuses to see you.

Edward Said was right, and it’s worse than expected

In 1978, Edward Said published Orientalism, demonstrating how the West had constructed a fantasized image of the Arab-Muslim world to justify its domination. Forty-eight years later, this framework hasn’t aged a bit. It has simply adapted to the Twitter format.

Trump didn’t invent Orientalism. He democratized it. He gave it an unapologetic face, an audience of tens of millions of people, and the firepower of the U.S. presidency. What was once a discreet academic bias has become official foreign policy.

The Structural Rejection of Complexity

The fundamental problem is not that Trump is racist—other presidents have been racist before him, albeit more discreetly. The problem is that the American political system rewards ignorance. A candidate who says, “Iran is complicated; there are reformers and conservatives; their culture is rich and ancient; and our own mistakes have contributed to the current situation”—that candidate loses the primaries.

The one who says, “They’re the bad guys; we’re going to crush them”—that one wins. And it is this electoral dynamic that inevitably produces leaders incapable of competently managing international crises.

Coverage That Amplifies Rather Than Corrects

When Trump makes a factual error about Iran, the American press offers a half-hearted correction—a “fact-check” published on page 12 of the website, buried between an ad for vitamins and an article about celebrities. The correction never goes viral the way the error does. It’s an unrelenting law of the media, and propagandists know this all too well.

Even more serious: major American networks invite “Iran experts” who have never set foot in the country, do not speak Farsi, and whose only qualification is having worked at a think tank funded by interests that benefit from tensions with Tehran. Expertise, in this system, is a useful fiction.

Europe’s Complicit Silence

And Europe? Europe watches, sighs, and says nothing. European leaders, who boast of their diplomatic sophistication and their knowledge of the world, accept without a murmur that an American president treats Iran—a country with which Europe has maintained commercial and diplomatic relations for centuries—as the backdrop for an action movie.

This silence is not prudence. It is cowardice. And this cowardice comes at a price: by omission, it validates the American narrative. It tells the world: “Deep down, we, too, believe that Iran does not deserve to be understood.”

Eighty-eight million people reduced to an acronym

In Washington’s vocabulary, Iran is the JCPOA. The Revolutionary Guards. The nuclear program. Acronyms, threats, potential targets on a military map. What is never part of this vocabulary: the eighty-eight million people who live within those borders.

The female students who fought for the right not to wear the hijab. The filmmakers—Kiarostami, Panahi, Farhadi—who brought Iran’s voice to screens around the world. The doctors, engineers, and poets who keep civil society alive under dual pressure: that of their own regime, and that of Western sanctions that are suffocating them.

Sanctions as Invisible Violence

When Trump tightens sanctions against Iran—always in the name of security, never in the name of the collective punishment they actually constitute—it is not the mullahs who suffer. Iranian leaders continue to eat, travel through intermediaries, and live comfortably. It is ordinary Iranians who can no longer find their medications. Sick children whose treatments are blocked by banking restrictions. Families whose purchasing power is collapsing.

And yet, no one in Washington knows a single name among these victims. They do not exist in the American political debate. You don’t kill what you don’t see. But you kill it anyway.

When America Destroyed Iranian Democracy

In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, because he had dared to nationalize his country’s oil. They installed the Shah in his place, a brutal autocrat whose secret police—the SAVAK—tortured and murdered thousands of opponents over the course of twenty-six years.

That coup is the cornerstone of everything that followed: the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis, and forty-five years of tensions. Every crisis between Iran and the West begins there, with that founding betrayal. And every mistake Trump makes—every blunder, every display of contempt—reopens that wound.

Amnesia as Foreign Policy

The most astonishing thing is not that Trump is unaware of this history. It is that the American education system, the mainstream media, and Washington think tanks—all of them—are complicit in this collective amnesia. The 1953 coup is a declassified fact, acknowledged by the CIA itself in 2013. It is taught at universities around the world. Except, apparently, in the training of U.S. presidents.

This amnesia is not an oversight. It is a choice. Because remembering would mean acknowledging responsibility. And acknowledging responsibility would mean changing policy. And changing policy is not in anyone’s interest in Washington—not the arms manufacturers, not the oil companies, and not the politicians who need an enemy to win elections.

The Necessary Enemy

Every empire needs an enemy. The Soviet Union played that role for forty years. After 1991, a new one had to be found. Iran was the ideal candidate: threatening enough to justify colossal military budgets, distant enough that the American public wouldn’t ask too many questions, and culturally different enough for racism to do the rest of the work.

The fabrication of Iran as an existential threat is a masterpiece of political communication. A country whose military budget amounts to less than 3% of that of the United States. A country that has not invaded any of its neighbors for more than two centuries. A country whose main “threat”—its nuclear program—was regulated by an international agreement that the United States itself chose to destroy.

The Reversed Mirror

And yet, in the American narrative, it is Iran that is dangerous. It is Iran that is irrational. It is Iran that threatens world peace. Not the country that invaded Iraq under false pretenses. Not the country that has 800 military bases around the world. Not the country that has used nuclear weapons—twice—against civilian populations.

The mirror never lies. But one must still be willing to look into it.

Failed diplomacy comes at the cost of blood

Trump’s mistakes regarding Iran are not amusing anecdotes for talk shows. They have measurable consequences. The assassination of General Soleimani in January 2020—ordered by Trump—nearly triggered an all-out war. Iran’s response—missiles fired at U.S. bases in Iraq—caused head injuries to dozens of American soldiers, which Trump dismissed as mere “headaches.”

U.S. soldiers wounded by their own president’s decision, and mocked by that same president. Iranian families who lost loved ones on Flight PS752, shot down by mistake by Iranian air defenses in the chaos that followed the attack. 176 dead—Iranians, Canadians, Ukrainians—victims of an escalation that ignorance and arrogance made inevitable.

The Hidden Cost of Sanctions

According to estimates by Human Rights Watch and Iranian medical organizations, U.S. sanctions have contributed to drug shortages that have cost thousands of lives. Cancer treatments unavailable. Surgical equipment undelivered. Patients dying not because of a bomb, but because of a bank form that no one in Washington will ever sign.

It is the cleanest form of violence in the world. No blood on one’s hands. No shocking images on the news. Just numbers in reports that no one reads.

What if it were intentional?

Let’s ask the uncomfortable question: what if Trump’s mistakes weren’t really mistakes? What if his blatant ignorance were a deliberate strategy—a way of signaling to his base that Iran, the Muslim world, and the “rest of the world” don’t deserve the respect accorded to “civilized” nations?

There’s nothing “conspiracy-theory” about this hypothesis. Dehumanizing the adversary is the oldest propaganda technique in the world. And in a political system where every word is tested by focus groups, where every tweet is calibrated to maximize engagement—is it really credible that these “blunders” are accidental?

Racism as an Electoral Platform

The data is indisputable. After every aggressive statement Trump makes toward Iran, his poll numbers rise among his base. Cultural ignorance isn’t a bug in the Trump system—it’s a feature. It tells millions of American voters what they want to hear: that their superiority is natural, that the complexity of the world is an invention of the elites, and that brute force is always preferable to understanding.

And yet, it is this very brute force that has produced Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Twenty years of lost wars, thousands of American deaths, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and not a single problem solved.

Conformism as a Doctrine

The European Union had a historic opportunity with the JCPOA. An imperfect agreement, but an agreement nonetheless. A framework for dialogue. Proof that diplomacy could work with Iran. When Trump withdrew from it in 2018, Europe protested—then fell in line. The INSTEX mechanism, intended to enable trade with Iran despite U.S. sanctions, was a resounding failure. A paper tiger that never really worked.

Europe chose transatlantic subservience over diplomatic sovereignty. And that choice sent a devastating message to Tehran: not even your European partners will stand up for you against America. Even those who tell you, “We understand,” will do nothing when it comes time to act.

France, Germany, and the Syndrome of Self-Imposed Powerlessness

France—which prides itself on an independent “Arab policy” and a historic relationship with Persia—was either unable or unwilling to stand up to the U.S. Germany, Iran’s leading European trading partner, bowed to U.S. extraterritorial sanctions. The United Kingdom followed Washington as usual, faithful to its “special relationship”—which is special in only one direction.

When everyone remains silent, that silence becomes complicity.

The lesson emerging powers are learning

China is watching. Russia is watching. India is watching. Brazil is watching. And what they see is a superpower treating a millennia-old civilization with the contempt a casino owner would show toward an employee. They see an international system that is supposed to be based on law and mutual respect, but which in reality operates according to the law of the jungle.

And they draw the logical conclusion: one must never depend on the West. One must never trust it. One must build alternative alliances. This is exactly what is happening with the BRICS, with the Sino-Iranian rapprochement, and with the multipolarization of the world. Trump’s racist gaffes are not just insults—they are geopolitical catalysts.

Lost credibility cannot be regained

When the United States claims to defend “universal values”—democracy, human rights, human dignity—and its president simultaneously treats an entire nation as a monolithic bloc of barbarians, the world takes note of the contradiction. And this contradiction undermines everything. Calls for democracy in China ring hollow. Moral lectures to Russia ring false. The West’s “moral leadership” has become a running joke in the foreign ministries of the Global South.

The Trap of False Equivalence

Let’s be clear, because nuance is the first casualty of this type of debate: criticizing Trump’s stance toward Iran does not mean endorsing the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic oppresses its people. It imprisons journalists, persecutes minorities, and executes dissidents. Iranian women who have fought for their freedom—from Mahsa Amini to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement—deserve unambiguous support.

But here’s what no one wants to hear: you don’t liberate a people by disparaging their culture. You don’t support Iranian reformers by conflating their country with Saudi Arabia. You don’t defend human rights by imposing sanctions that kill civilians. Criticism of Western racism toward Iran and criticism of the Iranian regime are not contradictory—they are complementary.

The Third Way That No One Is Proposing

There is a path between submission to the official Iranian narrative and the neoconservative crusade. This path lies in knowledge. In respect—not for the regime, but for the people and their civilization. In patient, informed, culturally competent diplomacy. In acknowledging the West’s past mistakes—starting with 1953.

No one in Washington is taking this path. Because it is long. Because it is complicated. And because it cannot be summed up in a tweet.

A Verdict Already Taking Shape

Trump’s racist remarks about Iran are not isolated incidents. They are the terminal symptom of a Western civilization that has lost the ability—or the will—to view the Other as an equal. They are proof that the “American century” is ending not with a military bang, but with a whisper of ignorance that the rest of the world hears all too clearly.

Iran existed before the United States. Iran will exist after it. And when future historians write the account of the decline of American hegemony, they will not speak only of lost wars and broken alliances. They will speak of a president who did not know the difference between an Arab and a Persian—and of a country that found that normal.

What We Owe to the Truth

Knowledge of the Other is not an academic luxury. It is a condition for survival. And we are in the process of losing it.

Every time a Western leader confuses, disparages, or caricatures a civilization he does not understand, he is not merely insulting that civilization. He is weakening his own. Because the strength of a civilization is not measured by its nuclear arsenal or its GDP. It is measured by its ability to understand what is not itself.

And by that measure, the West is failing.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost