Shakespeare tends to deal with contrasting pairs: so in the way that Romeo and Juliet is about both love and hate, Othello is about jealousy and its opposite, faith (trust!).
Othello actually pledges his life on Desdemona's faith early in the play, which comes full circle: of course, Othello should have trusted Desdemona, for she didn't sleep with Cassio. Othello trusts her at the start - and Iago gradually erodes that trust, planting seeds of suspicion and staging false "evidence" which persuades Othello that he has been cuckolded, and so, must murder his wife. Othello - fatally - trusts Iago.
And Iago, crucially, is the one who makes that change happen. He is the architect of the tragedy: yet how far he creates the tragedy and how far he plays on insecurities already present in Othello's mind depends on your reading of the play. It's notable though that Iago plays on Othello's otherness - Iago tells him he knows about the Venetian women, as he is a Venetian - to justify Desdemona's supposed infidelity. And, when Othello lists the reasons, he famously includes "haply for I am black".
Why does Iago do it though? Well, even Iago himself denies us the answer: "Demand me nothing", he says, in his final lines of the play, "what you know you know. From this time forth, I never shall speak word". That silence refuses the characters - and the audience - the justice of a motive.
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