An Analysis of French and Iranian Political Cartoons on Trump’s Withdrawal from the JCPOA

The present study was conducted to investigate how Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear deal on May 8, 2018 has been framed in political cartoons published in French and Iranian media. In this paper, a thematic analysis of published cartoons available on Google images from May 8, 2018 to June 8, 2018 was conducted in both French and Farsi. Five categories of news frames identified by Semetko and Valkenburg (2002) were applied on selected cartoons to observe how these frames are used on political cartoons in French and Iranian news outlets. Findings of the study showed that withdrawal of Trump from Iran’s nuclear deal has been framed mostly as a threat for France and has been considered in a bilateral perspective between USA and France. For the Iranian press the withdrawal is mostly considered as a result of Trump’s mental instability and P5+1 inaction.