Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump

Some in Iran’s new, more moderate government think the result of the presidential election provides an opportunity to make a lasting deal with the United States

By Farnaz Fassihi

President Donald J. Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers, imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran and ordered the killing of its top general. And Iran, federal prosecutors said on Friday, plotted to assassinate Mr. Trump before November’s election.

Yet despite that charged history, many former officials, pundits and newspaper editorials in Iran have openly called for the government to engage with Mr. Trump in the week since his re-election. Shargh, the main reformist daily newspaper, said in a front-page editorial that Iran’s new, more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, must “avoid past mistakes and assume a pragmatic and multidimensional policy.”

And many in Mr. Pezeshkian’s government agree, according to five Iranian officials who asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to discuss government policy. They say Mr. Trump loves to make deals where others have failed, and that his outsize dominance in the Republican Party could give any potential agreement more staying power. That might give an opening for some kind of lasting deal with the United States, they argue.

“Do not lose this historic opportunity for change in Iran-U.S. relations,” wrote a prominent politician and former political adviser to Iran’s government, Hamid Aboutalebi, in an open letter to Iran’s president. He advised Mr. Pezeshkian to congratulate Mr. Trump on winning the election and set a new tone for a pragmatic and forward-looking policy.

President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran in September. Some in Mr. Masoud’s government are calling on him to engage President-elect Donald J. Trump.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Still, critical decisions in Iran are made by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and he banned negotiations with Mr. Trump during his first term. In Iran’s factional politics, even if Mr. Pezeshkian wanted to negotiate with Mr. Trump, he would have to get Mr. Khamenei’s approval.

And many conservatives, including some in the powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, oppose any engagement with Mr. Trump. The U.S. Justice Department has said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps hacked Mr. Trump’s campaign computers and spread disinformation online in an attempt to influence the presidential election. On Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed an effort by Iran to assassinate Mr. Trump.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called the those charges a “fabricated” scenario in a post on X on Saturday. He said Iran respected the American people’s choice in electing their president, and that the path forward for Iran and the U.S. begins with mutual “respect” and “confidence building.”

Reza Salehi, a conservative analyst in Tehran close to the country’s hard-line political faction, said in an interview that negotiation with Mr. Trump would be politically challenging for Iran’s new government. Conservatives have already voiced their disapproval, saying any engagement would be a betrayal of Gen. Qassim Suleimani, whose assassination Mr. Trump ordered in 2020.

Hamshahri, a conservative newspaper run by Tehran’s municipal government, ran front page photos of Mr. Trump in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs with the headline: “The return of the killer.” Still, even Mr. Salehi said: “I’m going to go against this position and say that Trump will benefit Iran compared to his predecessor.” He added: “He is into making deals; he is into ending wars and against starting new ones.”

Even those who want to engage with Mr. Trump say that the country’s foreign policy for a Trump era will largely depend on how Mr. Trump approaches Iran and the Middle East, as well as who he selects for his administration, according to the five officials.

Mr. Trump recently said that he does not seek to harm Iran, and his main demand was that the country not develop nuclear weapons. But at another point during the campaign, he appeared to give Israel a green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. He said that Israel should “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.”

And on Sunday in a video statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had spoken to Mr. Trump and “we see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects, and on the dangers they reflect.”

Brian Hook, who served as a representative for Iran during the first Trump administration, told CNN on Thursday that Mr. Trump “has no interest in regime change,” but he also “understands that the chief driver of instability in the Middle East is the Iranian regime.”

One of the first decisions that Iran must make is whether to follow though on promises to launch a massive revenge attack on Israel. Last month, Israel struck missile bases and air defense systems around Iran’s critical energy sites after Tehran launched a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel to avenge the killing of several senior commanders and top regional allies.

Mr. Trump has been a staunch supporter of Israel. A potential war between Iran and Israel could quickly escalate tensions with an incoming Trump administration and derail any chances of better relations.

The five Iranian officials said that many of Mr. Trump’s stated foreign policy goals — ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, ending the war in Ukraine and an “America First” agenda — appeal to Iran.

Ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon could help avert a wider war between Israel and Iran, which supports Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Ending the war in Ukraine could take pressure off Iran for supplying weapons to Russia. And Mr. Trump’s domestic policy could mean less interest in other countries’ affairs.

A billboard in Tehran this month reading, in Persian, “America is the great Satan” and, in Hebrew, “America will throw you away like used toilet paper.”Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister and current vice president for strategic affairs in Iran, said in a statement on X that he hopes Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance would “stand against war as pledged, and will heed the clear lesson given by the American electorate to end wars and prevent new ones.”

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president, said in an interview from Tehran that his advice would be “to turn the threat of Trump into a good opportunity and start active diplomacy.”

“Trump likes to take personal credit for resolving a crisis, and one of the main crises now is the one between Iran and the America,” he said.

Two competing strategies are being discussed in Iran’s policy circles, Mr. Abtahi said. One calls for Iran to proceed defiantly and strengthen its proxy militias in the Middle East to deter the United States and Israel. The other calls for negotiating with Mr. Trump, which is gaining traction among some conservatives, largely because they don’t see an alternative for resolving Iran’s economic problems.

For more than two decades, Iran’s diplomacy with the United States has been predicated on the American political party in office, loosely centered on the idea that Republicans are more hostile to diplomacy while Democrats are more open to it.

Iran refused to engage with Mr. Trump after he imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran during his first term. The country bided its time, hoping that the next Democratic administration would lift sanctions and return to the nuclear deal that Mr. Trump had abandoned.

Those moves never materialized. The Biden administration and Iran never returned to the deal, and sanctions remained in place.

A wall by the road outside Baghdad’s international airport, where a U.S. drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a senior Iranian general, in 2020.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The five Iranian officials familiar with Iran’s foreign policy planning, two of them from the foreign ministry, said the country’s experience with the Biden administration was frustrating and led many to conclude that a deal with a Republican administration would yield longer lasting results.

The two officials from the foreign ministry said that Iran has been preparing for a potential Trump presidency for months, with the ministry creating an informal working group on the topic as far back as March.

Mr. Pezeshkian has acknowledged that any hope for economic relief is tied to improving relations with the West.

“For us, it does not matter who has won the election in America because we rely on our own internal strength,” Mr. Pezeshkian said on Wednesday, according to Iranian media reports. At the same time, “we will not have a limited and closed outlook in developing our relations with countries,” he added.

Analysts in Iran and the United States said that Mr. Trump would most likely require Iran to stop arming and funding the militant groups fighting Israel as part of any deal to lift sanctions. Mr. Khamenei, the supreme leader, has repeatedly said that Iran’s support for those groups will continue.

Rahman Ghahremanpour, an analyst in Tehran, said Iran does not have many options. Maintaining the status quo for another four years is not tenable. The economy is tanking under sanctions and mismanagement, inflation is skyrocketing and domestic discontent remains high.

“We do not want more sanctions and more instability,” Mr. Ghahremanpour said. “But at the same time, a comprehensive deal with Trump has to give us some wiggle room to save face domestically and justify it. That will be the big challenge.”

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Belgium.

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization, and also covers Iran and the shadow war between Iran and Israel. She is based in New York. More about Farnaz Fassihi