Description
This article explores the role of trust and mistrust in US-Iranian nuclear deal through Bayesian realist premises. Contrary to hard-nosed realist approaches, according to which state possess rather fixed motivations as they all aim to survive under anarchy, Bayesian realist outlook believes that states’ motivations vary regarding to different contexts. Moreover, states as rational actors have tendency to calculate the motivations of others accurately in the long-run. Looking at the Iranian nuclear deal allows us to understand that states’ behavioral transformation is an indicator of parties’ changing levels of trust towards each other. Even if each side’s beliefs that the other side is trustworthy or the other makes cooperative gestures in the first step, there is no guarantee that the nuclear deal will be continued in the future. Due to there is the possible belief that exploiting the cooperation by one side for its own sake, there is possibility of the level of trust one another can change. In that regard, the nuclear deal as a historical agreement gives a chance to verify that the parties’ beliefs about others’ motivation. Despite withdrawal of the nuclear deal by the Republican Trump presidency, the nuclear negotiations started when the term of a hard-liner Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, the parties’ beliefs about the others’ trustworthiness or untrustworthiness converge on correct one through the deal. Thus, the author asserts that possibility of the sustainability of the Iranian nuclear deal would depend on the states’, as unitary rational actors’, possibility of changing level of trust rather than the leaders’ political propensity.
