When Donald Trump threatens to raze Iran to the ground and destroy its ‘civilisation’, sets a deadline for a possible military intervention and then, just hours before the deadline, announces a temporary truce, many observers read that sequence as a contradiction or a sign of unpredictable leadership. In reality, the point is another.

That sequence is not a communicative accident, but a deliberate narrative architecture. Threat, tension building and subsequent truce are part of a strategy that operates on two levels: international negotiation and public perception of leadership. It is in this space that we find what I have called performative diplomacy, a mode of conducting international relations in which the symbolic, narrative and media dimension of foreign policy becomes an integral part of the exercise of power.

Performative diplomacy does not replace traditional diplomacy, but transforms it. Strategic decisions continue to arise in the power relations between states, while their public representation becomes part of the negotiation itself. The crisis, in other words, is not just managed: it is staged.

Understanding this transformation means looking at three levels together: the communicative dimension of the crisis, the diplomatic genealogy of strategic pressure techniques and their evolution in the contemporary media ecosystem.

Performer and stage: Trump and Iran

The communicative handling of the crisis with Iran offers a particularly clear example of how performative diplomacy works. Indeed, political action is articulated according to a recognisable narrative sequence that can be reconstructed through four basic steps:

• public threat
• media amplification
• tension construction
• granting of the truce

This sequence is not simply a way of communicating political decision-making. It is, more properly, a technique of managing collective attention. The leader deliberately produces an emotional peak in the global public sphere and then monopolises the moment of relief, simultaneously occupying two discursive positions: that of the one who makes the danger credible and that of the one who neutralises it.

An illuminating metaphor for understanding this mechanism comes from developmental psychology. In the famous Still Face experiment conducted by Edward Tronick in 1978, a parent suddenly interrupts emotional interaction with their child while maintaining a completely expressionless face. The child reacts with increasing anxiety, trying to re-establish contact. When the parent smiles again, the emotional relief is immediate. The tension-release sequence thus becomes a powerful relational device.

Something similar happens in performative diplomacy. The leader deliberately constructs the emotional peak of the crisis through a public threat amplified by the global media system and subsequently monopolises the de-escalation phase, presenting himself as the actor capable of averting the evoked catastrophe. The crisis thus becomes a communicative device, a narrative sequence designed to produce a certain perceptual effect in public opinion.

This dynamic can also be read through the lens of the sociology of interaction developed by Erving Goffman. According to Goffman, social life is organised like a play in which actors continuously construct their public identity through situated performances. Contemporary political leadership increasingly operates within this scheme: the leader does not only manage power, but also plays a role on the public stage, constructing through symbolic gestures, statements and images a representation of his or her own ability to control events.

Performative diplomacy arises precisely in this space of intersection between political power and communicative performance. The public threat becomes a stage act capable of producing global attention; the subsequent truce becomes the narrative moment in which the leader symbolically re-appropriates the ability to govern the crisis.

The centrality of language

From a purely linguistic perspective, this process can be interpreted through the analytical categories developed by critical political linguistics. Political language does not merely describe reality, but performs a performative and constitutive function, helping to produce political reality through the strategic use of discourse. In this framework, argumentative topoi, i.e. the recurring narrative structures that enable the construction of shared interpretations of events, are particularly important.

The Iranian crisis clearly mobilises the topos of threat and the topos of protection, combining them within the same discursive architecture. The leader constructs the scenario of imminent danger through a highly dramatised rhetoric, made up of continuous reminders of possible destruction, imminent catastrophe and ‘surprises’ capable of radically changing the course of the crisis. In this way, the threat is not only declared, but publicly performed, fuelling the idea that the escalation could precipitate into an apocalyptic scenario at any moment.

It is against this background that it becomes possible to activate the second narrative register, that of protection. After amplifying the perception of risk, the leader introduces the truce or suspension of military action, presenting himself as the actor capable of interrupting escalation. The leadership thus asserts itself through a dual discursive strategy: first the dramatisation of the crisis, then the re-appropriation of the capacity to control.

Cold War conflict diplomacy

To understand the logic of contemporary performative diplomacy, it is useful to go back to one of the most influential theoretical elaborations of 20th century nuclear strategy: the theory of brinkmanship developed by Thomas Schelling.

In his famous The Strategy of Conflict (1960), Schelling defines brinkmanship not as a mere threat of mutual destruction, but as the deliberate manipulation of a shared risk. The force of the threat derives not so much from the will to unleash catastrophe, but from the ability to generate a situation in which that catastrophe could occur even without an explicit decision by the contenders. This is what Schelling describes in a formula that has become famous: ‘the threat that leaves something to chance ‘.

The logic of brinkmanship is to progressively bring a crisis towards a zone of increasing strategic instability. Schelling describes it with an effective image: the chasm of war is not a sharp edge, but a slippery slope. The further the contenders advance down that slope, the greater the probability that an accidental slip will drag them both into catastrophe.

It is precisely this partial loss of control that becomes the instrument of negotiation. A threat of total destruction would have little credibility because it is inherently irrational; brinkmanship circumvents this problem by progressively increasing the risk of a catastrophe that neither side can afford to ignore.

The dynamics are often modelled in game theory through the Chicken Game: two cars race against each other and whoever swerves first loses, but if no one swerves the collision is inevitable. In certain situations it may even be rational to show less control, forcing the opponent to stop.

The most emblematic historical example remains the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union raised the risk of nuclear escalation to such a level that uncertainty itself became the main factor of diplomatic pressure.

Cold War conflict diplomacy thus moved along this fine line between strategic pressure and escalation control. However, these dynamics mainly developed in the secretive channels of diplomacy, far from the gaze of global public opinion.

In the era of performative diplomacy, that same logic does not disappear, but changes stage: the manipulation of risk no longer takes place only among decision-makers, but is exposed and amplified in the global public space, becoming part of the political communication of the crisis.

From Red Phone to Truth Social

Performative diplomacy arose from the transformation of the balance that had characterised Cold War diplomacy. The negotiating techniques described by Thomas Schelling have not disappeared, but have adapted to a radically different communicative environment.

In the contemporary media ecosystem, marked by the permanent circulation of information and the centrality of social networks, the international crisis also becomes a narrative resource. Leaders no longer communicate only with their diplomatic interlocutors, but with a plurality of audiences – national public opinion, allies, global media and financial markets – transforming diplomacy also into a public construction of the meaning of the crisis.

This analysis is not intended to discuss the effectiveness or appropriateness of such practices, but to observe how the crisis is now being communicated and made politically intelligible in the global public space.

In this context, foreign policy increasingly takes on the features of a multilevel communication performance. The public threat not only serves to influence the adversary, but also helps to define the interpretative frame through which public opinion perceives the event. The leader thus becomes not only a strategic actor, but also an entrepreneur of political narratives capable of orienting the media cycle and occupying the symbolic space of the crisis.

From a poly-linguistic perspective, this process reflects a transformation of the discursive strategies of power. Through the use of topoi, metaphors and recurring narrative structures, political language constructs cognitive frames that orient the collective perception of events.

The logic remains that identified by Schelling: the manipulation of risk as an instrument of strategic pressure. What changes is the stage. Whereas during the Cold War crisis management took place in the secretive channels of diplomacy, today it increasingly takes place in the public space of global communication. It is in this shift that we see one of the most profound transformations in contemporary international politics: the transition from the red telephone to Truth Social.