The Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy on December 4, marking a sharp departure from both the first Trump and the Biden administrations, which had placed major-power competition at the center of U.S. strategy. The new document omits explicit references to great-power rivalry altogether and adopts a notably conciliatory posture toward Russia and China, framing U.S. policy as “managing European relations with Russia” and “rebalancing” economic ties with Beijing. It presents the dominance of larger, wealthier states as an immutable feature of international life and rejects the notion of American global supremacy—an implicit endorsement of spheres of influence.
[The document frames] U.S. policy as “managing European relations with Russia” and “rebalancing” economic ties with Beijing.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has reacted sharply. Tasnim News, the flagship outlet of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, describes the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy as “a new reflection of the decline of American hegemony.” At the same time, the website highlights what it calls a glaring contradiction: While the National Security Strategy asserts that regional conflicts in the Middle East have diminished, the Trump administration’s actions over the past ten months—most notably, the June 2025 airstrikes on Iran’s enrichment sites—suggest the opposite.
Tasnim assails the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and casts it as a violation of President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) principle of avoiding “endless wars.” Yet, uncharacteristically, the article is not the usual mix of ideological slogans and conspiratorial rhetoric. Its tone and structure suggest analysts affiliated with regime-aligned think tanks authored it, rather than routine, more shallow propagandists.
On the Middle East, the National Security Strategy claims that the region’s most destabilizing actor, Iran, has been weakened both by Israeli operations since October 7, 2023, and by the Trump administration’s own Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. It concludes that conflict remains a challenge but is far less severe than headlines suggest.
Tasnim seizes on this section, arguing that U.S. behavior tells a very different story. It writes: “In practice, the U.S. approach in the Middle East over the past year—including the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities—does not align with these claims and has in fact made the American presence even more visible. Moreover, this document is a new reflection of the United States’ decline on the global stage.”
The outlet further observes neither the Middle East nor Europe any longer occupies a central position in Washington’s strategic worldview—a shift it attributes to domestic political pressures and the need to satisfy Trump’s base. Nevertheless, Tasnim maintains that the United States remains entangled in regional affairs. Still, “the decline of U.S. hegemony is evident in the fact that the United States can no longer present itself as a ‘moral leader’ and instead turns inward toward protectionist domestic policies,” Tasnim concludes, adding that this inward turn reflects America’s erosion of soft power vis-à-vis rivals such as China.
Israeli officials have warned in recent days that Tehran is working to rebuild its ballistic-missile arsenal after its defeat in the June war.
Notably, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ outlet omits a key analytical point highlighted by many Western experts: The new National Security Strategy’s implicit acceptance of spheres of influence aligns with the strategic preferences of Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. The strategy represents a reversal from Trump’s own 2017 doctrine, which labeled Russia a revisionist adversary. Despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, nuclear provocations, violations of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, and ongoing aggression against U.S. allies, the 2025 National Security Strategy scarcely acknowledges the danger Russia poses. Instead, it emphasizes “restoring strategic stability” with Moscow and portrays the European Union—not the Kremlin—as the chief threat to U.S. interests through alleged “civilization erasure.” Russian officials have welcomed the document, which reads more favorably to their worldview than to that of America’s traditional allies.
The National Security Strategy’s claim that Middle Eastern conflicts are ebbing, and that the region is poised to attract foreign investment, however, offers little reassurance to Israel and other states threatened by Iran. Israeli officials have warned in recent days that Tehran is working to rebuild its ballistic-missile arsenal after its defeat in the June war. Statements from Iranian leaders likewise show no inclination to compromise on nuclear or regional issues. If anything, their rhetoric has grown more belligerent: Just days ago, Tehran issued fresh threats against the United Arab Emirates.
Words have consequences. Unfortunately, by seeking to downplay the Middle Eastern conflicts and struggles within the region, the new National Security Strategy may have the opposite effect.
