Donald Trump is prosecuting a war against Iran without any coherent or consistent strategic framework, a senior Iranian academic has told Al Jazeera, warning that Tehran’s patience with the prospect of a negotiated settlement is rapidly diminishing.
Mohammad Islami, a research fellow in Middle East and North African Studies at Tehran University, made the stark assessment during a live interview, arguing that the erratic and unpredictable nature of Washington’s conduct has fundamentally undermined Iranian confidence in the possibility of a good-faith diplomatic process.
“From the very first hours of this conflict, it is obvious that Donald Trump is not following any specific strategy toward the war,” Islami said bluntly. “Every day he is declaring another objective for the war.”
Islami’s characterisation paints a picture of a US administration that has oscillated between competing objectives — diplomatic overtures one moment and escalatory threats the next — leaving Iranian policymakers and negotiators unable to establish a reliable baseline from which to engage constructively.
This strategic incoherence, Islami argued, has been matched by increasingly alarming rhetoric from the US president. Trump, he noted, has now moved to threatening the destruction of Iranian civilian infrastructure, including power stations and bridges — a development that Islami described as having a profound and chilling effect on public sentiment within Iran.
“He is threatening the Iranians and the Iranian nation by bombing the infrastructure,” Islami said. “In Iran, everybody is waiting for the war to be continued.”
This sense of resignation, Islami explained, is not limited to ordinary citizens. Even at the level of senior policy decision-makers, there is an overwhelming sense that the trajectory of events is pointing not toward dialogue but toward a sustained and deepening military confrontation.
The breakdown in trust has been accelerated, Islami noted, by several concrete actions taken by the Trump administration that Iran perceives as direct acts of hostility. Chief among these was the imposition and enforcement of a naval blockade, which resulted in the interception of an Iranian cargo vessel — a move that triggered furious debate within Tehran about whether continued engagement with Washington served any purpose.
Islami was also critical of what he described as false or misleading public statements made by Trump regarding the state of negotiations, arguing that the president’s social media communications had actively contradicted the positions being advanced by American representatives at the negotiating table.
