The Discursive Manufacturing of Iranophobia and Global Preemptive Collaborations in Donald Trump's Discourse

Abstract

Over the past years, Iran's reputation has been defined with fear-generating terms and resources in connection with extended nuclear programmes. A critical investigation of the discourse of Iranophobia in the recurrent political discourse of the USA reveals the spatial nature of this discourse. The aim of this paper is towards an analysis of Donald Trump's 2017-2018 speeches which have their focus on Iran/the Iran Deal. Applying Proximisation Theory (Cap 2013) shows that he conflates spatial and temporal proximisation strategies while conceptually construing Iran as a strong and ubiquitous regional and global threat to the world. Furthermore, we shall indicate how the discourse of Iranophobia legitimates the US withdrawal from the Iran Deal and imposing heavy economic sanctions as preemptive measures. The analysis also shows that Trump's discourse on Iran endeavours to establish a global consensus against Iran by using lexico-grammatical markers and pragmatic tools in order to influence the international political and strategic behaviour of Iran.