Securitization of Iran's Nuclear Program During Obama’s First Administration

Objective: Barack Obama entered office, promising engagement with Tehran; by the end of his first term, his administration had assembled an exceptionally broad multilateral sanctions regime. This article explains that reversal; it uses the case of Iran’s nuclear program to extend the Copenhagen School's theory of securitization in two ways. First, it treats sanctions and institutional measures not just as consequences of a completed securitization but as part of the securitizing process itself: the UN Security Council Resolution ۱۹۲۹, the IAEA's November ۲۰۱۱ report on possible military dimensions, and the ۲۰۱۲ oil embargo each reset the discursive ground and enabled the next move, so discourse and material action co-produced one another. Second, it theorizes the target state's responses as a structural enabling condition of securitization rather than a factor external to it. Method: Using explanatory-outcome process tracing, the analysis follows the campaign through four stages - discursive entrapment (۲۰۰۹), institutional coalescence around Resolution ۱۹۲۹ (۲۰۱۰), scientific validation through the November IAEA (۲۰۱۱), and the normalization of sanctions (۲۰۱۲) - and identifies the United States and its allies as the securitizing actors. Results: Iran's legalism, its missed diplomatic openings, and the timing of its enrichment disclosures emerge as conditions that facilitated the campaign without being its cause.

کلیدواژه ها:

Copenhagen School ، multilateral sanctions ، Obama Administration ، Process Tracing ، Securitization ، Target agency