Iran looms large as an important policy question in the Middle East these days. But it barely received mention on the campaign trail in the United States, where American voters are fixated on issues closer to home: the economy, abortion, immigration, and the health of America's democratic system are all front and centre. This doesn't mean that Iran is unimportant when it comes to US national security policy—it just these issues aren’t very likely to determine who will win the presidential race in November.
Predicting what a future US president will do in office based on what they say on the campaign trail is a challenge— circumstances often shape policy, and things look a lot different from the Oval Office than they do from the podium at a campaign rally aimed at winning over swing voters. Nevertheless, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have track records on Iran based on their time in office—Trump was US president from 2017-2021, and Harris is the sitting Vice President in office since 2021.
Trump's unpredictability vs. Harris's technocratic managerial approach
Based on the two administrations of Trump and Biden over the past seven-plus years, there are some common threads to the approach on Iran across both administrations: both have used economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation as a main tool, and both were receptive to the potential for diplomacy with Iran. Trump reportedly tried very hard to meet his counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, at the UN General Assembly in 2018 and expressed a desire to do so the way he did with North Korea's leader.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have generally allowed Iran and its regional network of proxies to shape the landscape without using the full force of military power to respond to Iran's corrosive regional role. Trump did take the bold move of assassinating Qasem Soleimani in 2020, but his administration also didn't respond to the 2019 attack on oil facilities in Abqaiq and sent so many mixed signals about America’s role in the region, particularly in places like Syria and Iraq.
The Biden administration's approach to Iran's destabilising regional actions has mostly been to react to the attacks and threats Iran has posed, with a focus that was more heavily weighted towards trying to advance de-escalation rather than promote deterrence.
There are two main differences: first, Harris has served in an administration that came into office with senior advisors still operating with the assumption that the Obama administration had: that America's Middle East partners needed to find a modus vivendi to "share the region" with Iran and that simply rejoining the Iran nuclear deal and talking out our differences was the best pathway. During the past year, the Biden administration has gradually shifted its approach to Iran towards a stronger pushback against the destabilisation actions of Iran and its regional partners.
Vice President Harris recently said that Iran was America’s “greatest adversary” because it has “American blood on their hands” Trump's approach to Iran fell under the label of "maximum pressure"—even if it did not live up to that reality, especially as Iran's regional partners grew in strength and number in places like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The second main difference was in tone, style, and operating system for US foreign policy. Trump prided himself on being unpredictable in his overall foreign policy, seeking to knock foes and friends off balance with moves and statements aimed at gaining leverage. He publicly criticised Saudi Arabia at rallies in the United States, and he threatened to take Iraq's oil, but it didn't mean much in terms of actual actions. Trump has also said during this year’s election campaign that he would make a deal with Iran’s leaders and even bring Iran into the Abraham Accords with Israel.
It takes two to tango: Iran’s role matters
Events in Tehran also matter. Perhaps Iran might offer the next American president an opportunity to change the course in relations and, with it, bring about a process of de-escalation that could be felt across the Middle East. President Masoud Pezeshkian claims that is his intention. In his first press conference on 16 September, he made a bold statement when he said: if the Americans “stop sanctioning us and pressuring us, then we will have no problems with them. We can be brothers.”
But Iran watchers in the United States and the Arab world will point to a basic truth that Pezeshkian cannot undo: the president in the Islamic Republic can speak the language of brotherhood aimed at adversaries, but he does not have the power to bring about sea change as far as Tehran’s interventionist regional agenda is concerned. That agenda is decided by two other, more powerful centres of power: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the generals in the Revolutionary Guards that have spent the last few decades expanding Iran’s regional web of militant partners from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen.
In fact, Pezeshkian is already facing a backlash from reactionary circles, who call him naïve for thinking the Americans would ever want to be “brothers” to Iran. Such criticism of the new Iranian president illustrates that ideological obstacles in Tehran might be hard to overcome if the regime decides to genuinely probe the idea of rapprochement with Washington.
But Iran watchers will also tell you that the Islamist system in Tehran is under colossal public pressure to improve living standards and move the country away from the constant threat of a conflict with the Americans and Israel. That, above all, means lowering the temperature in the region and injecting the ailing Iranian economy with new life, which is only realistically possible if the American-led sanctions on Iran are lifted or significantly reduced. The word in Tehran is that the regime is so hard-pressed to move the needle that the outcome of the November American presidential election will not be a stumbling point.
Tehran seems poised to brush aside Donald Trump’s heavy-handed tactics against Iran in his first term and appears equally prepared not to hold Kamala Harris accountable for a Biden administration that, in effect, deprioritised Iran as a policy file for most of its time in office, with the exception of the past few weeks. But will the Iranians meet more openness from the American side going forward?
A review of the Iran policies of the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations can shed much light on what to expect from Washington on the question of Iran. But regardless of who wins the American presidential elections, Tehran has to begin to accept that both regional stability and core Iranian national interests require Tehran to revisit its overall approach to the outside world.
