On May 8, 2018, President Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Since the JCPOA is endorsed by a United Nations Security Council Resolution and supported by the international community, Trump has had to justify this controversial decision. Based on data extracted from Trump’s Twitter account and taking advantage of Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) discursive construction of the legitimation model, this article addresses the following question: How has Donald Trump attempted to delegitimize the JCPOA?

Traditionally dominated by the trade, energy and Diaspora ties, the India-UAE relationship has been growing substantially in the security arena in recent years. There are deliberate and robust attempts from both sides to forge strong security cooperation. The high volume of trade and commerce, common threat perceptions such as terrorism and piracy, continuing regional instability in West Asia since 2011 are some of the key drivers of the growing India-UAE security cooperation. Recent high-level visits have provided the much needed confidence to both sides to engage in the security domain.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar. They accused Qatar of supporting extremist and terror groups in the region, having close ties with Iran, undermining the security and stability of the Gulf region, and using the satellite television network Al Jazeera as a propaganda machine. They also put up a list of demands before Qatar, to be accepted within 10 days in order to end the boycott.

The discipline of International Relations (IR) is deeply enmeshed in the history, intellectual traditions and agency claims of the West, thus obscuring the contributions from the non-Western world. IR theory fails to take cognisance of the global distribution of the various actors along with their contribution to a heterogeneous and rich discipline. There is a pressing need for a departure from IR’s historic complicity with marginalisation and the silencing of alternative epistemologies, thereby making its process of knowledge production truly global and democratic.