After nine months of disavowing the Obama administration’s Iran policy, US President Donald Trump has finally unveiled his strategy toward the Islamic Republic: all-out confrontation. His Oct. 13 speech announcing the policy was nothing short of war mongering and marks the elimination of any prospects for successful US-Iran diplomacy.

Trump's address and the White House fact sheet detailing his Iran policy centered on traditional US rebukes of Iran over its regional influence, defensive capabilities (such as its ballistic missile program), its domestic policies and the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Of course, he also followed through with his threat to decertify Iranian compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), against the wishes of his senior advisers and European allies, and even as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly verified Iran’s compliance with its obligations under the nuclear deal. Trump also said that if a “solution” to the JCPOA was not reached with Congress and US allies, “then the agreement will be terminated.” Furthermore, while he stopped short of designating the IRGC as a terrorist group, he imposed new sanctions on the organization.

Trump’s Iran policy is based on an amalgamation of the most hard-line talking points on Iran uttered by every US administration since 1979, with the sole exception of President Barack Obama’s second term. Every US president since 1979 has accused the Iranian government of being a state sponsor of terrorism, destabilizing the region and transgressing the rights of its people. US policies all evoked a desire for regime change through attempting to isolate Iran and mobilize regional and international powers against it, exporting arms to regional states hostile to Iran, supporting violent opposition groups and separatists inside Iran, and engaging in covert war aimed at sabotaging Iran’s economic and military capabilities.

Trump’s speech was notable given that it was light on actual strategy. Instead, he relied on polemics and insults bound to offend Iranians of every political stripe, particularly through use of the term “Arabian Gulf” to refer to the historically and internationally recognized name for the body of water that separates Iran’s southwestern coast and the Arabian Peninsula. Of note, the United States officially refers to the latter as the Persian Gulf, as does the United Nations. Consequently, such rhetoric reinforces to the Iranian people the disingenuousness of Trump's references to their “proud history … culture … [and] civilization”; this, coupled with Trump’s outright ban on Iranians entering the United States, negates any Trump claim of siding with them.