Donald Trump is still a few weeks away from the White House, but every decision he makes is watched closely by a host of stakeholders around the world. What we do know is that the president-elect is notoriously unpredictable, especially when it comes to Middle East policy. Observers are thus looking into his personnel appointments and statements made by Trump’s team-in-formation to get a sense of where the wind is blowing.
Those who favour confrontation with the Iranian regime rejoiced when Trump’s picks for key national security positions turned out to be those with hawkish positions on Iran. This was especially after his cutting ties with Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley had worried them that Trump was turning in the opposite direction.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, has called Iran a “terrorist” regime, called on Israel to attack the country and criticised the Biden administration for its diplomatic approach to the Islamic Republic. Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security advisor, is of a similar hue—a staunch supporter of Israel who was described as an “Iran hawk” in most headlines. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel is former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee—a staunch supporter of the Israeli right-wing with deeply entrenched Christian Zionist beliefs.
But other news from the Trump camp has been more disappointing for Iran hawks. His suggested director of national intelligence is former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard, who had cosied up to Iran’s favourite Arab leader, the now-deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. She supported Russia’s bombing of Syria in support of al-Assad. When Trump left the Iran Deal in 2018 and brought upon a policy of maximum pressure on Tehran, Gabbard attacked him harshly. She was also critical of his decision to assassinate Iran’s leading general, Qasem Soleimani.
Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a campaign rally for former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on October 27, 2024.
Iran-Trump team meeting
More distressing for Iran hawks was the news that the first meeting between Trump’s team and the Iranian regime took place less than a week after the election. According to Iranian officials who spoke to the New York Times, Musk met with Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, on 11 November. The Iranians said that it was Musk who asked for the meeting. For its part, CBS confirmed the meeting based on its own sources, adding that it took place in Ambassador Iravani’s official residence in New York.
Does this mean that Trump’s team has sent contradictory signals about what its policy on Iran would be? Such an impression has made life difficult for those who hope to put Trump in a simple box, either as “anti-war” who will make peace with Iran or as a pro-Israel president who will make life hell for the Iranian regime.
Until things become more clear, expect each camp to amplify news items that favour its own narrative while putting a spin on those that don’t. We can expect more of this game in the coming months and years.
In reality, Trump’s attitude to Iran won’t fit in either of the two rigid boxes. Unlike what many pro-Trump opponents of the Iranian regime hope, there is little reason to believe he’d like to topple the regime. Mired in infighting, the Iranian opposition has failed to provide a coherent and serious alternative to the regime. Both during his first term (2017-2021) and during the recent presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly affirmed that he had no interest in regime change in Iran. He made clear that he was ready to talk to Tehran without preconditions and that the country could prosper under its current leaders.
Unlike what many pro-Trump opponents of the Iranian regime hope, there is little reason to believe he'd like to topple the Iranian regime
Dialing down tensions
Last month, when Iranian-American podcaster Patrick Bet-David asked Trump about the possibility of him overthrowing the regime, the Republican president was quick to dismiss such notions. "We can't get involved with all that… we can't even run ourselves, Patrick," he retorted. It is clear that Trump would prefer a deal with Iran which could position him as a peacemaker and help bring down the regional tensions.
The Iranian regime has been afraid of Trump's return for months, but this also means that they've prepared contingency plans for it. According to Wall Street Journal, even before Trump was elected, the US received a secret letter from Tehran assuring that Iranians weren't after killing the former president. This is despite the fact that Iran's high-ranking military officials had openly threatened Trump with assassination before. US prosecutors have issued two indictments related to Iran's plotting against Trump.
After the elections were over, one of the first Iranian reactions came from Iran's vice president for strategic affairs, Javad Zarif, who all but celebrated Trump's victory as a sign of the US voters "rejecting a shameful year of US complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza and carnage in Lebanon." He asked Trump to "stand against war as pledged" and help "end wars and prevent new ones." Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, affirmed that Iran respects the choice of US voters.
In Tehran, many pundits are calling for Iran to seek a deal with the US. Hadi Borhani, professor of Israel studies at the University of Tehran, has even called for direct Iran-US talks, without the usual reliance on Qatari or Omani meditation, "without preconditions, as soon as possible and without losing time."
But even if both Trump and Tehran are interested in a deal, there is no easy path to getting there. Trump will have to contend with many obstacles. First, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is ever-more intent on confronting Iran. Emboldened by Trump's election, Netanyahu issued a new video message to the people of Iran, calling on them to overthrow the rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the message, Netanyahu went perhaps further than he ever has, even repeating the slogan of Iranian 2022-23 protesters (Women, Life, Freedom) in Persian.
Treading carefully
In 2024, after years of shadow war, Iran and Israel exchanged direct blows. As it is contemplating when and how to answer Israel's 26 October missile attack on its soil, Iran is likely to think twice about any such attacks with Trump in office. But the Rubicon of direct fire between Iran and Israel has been crossed. Some in Israel are now calling for broader attacks on Iran, hoping that this would finally bring an end to the regime that has bedevilled it for decades.
But any deal between the US and Iran will need to have some sort of Israeli buy-in. Will Trump be able to acquire any Israel-related concessions from Iran to make that happen? Or will this lead to a conflict inside the Trump camp?
The second issue is the myriad of technical details that pervade the US-Iranian relationship. Iran now faces a long list of sanctions related to its support for militias in the region, its nuclear programme, its repression of human rights and its support for Russia's war against Ukraine. The nuclear file alone is one of the most complex and multi-faceted disputes in the world. It involves not just diplomats but bankers and physicists. Getting to a deal that could meaningfully lift the burden of sanctions on Iran while retracting its nuclear programme enough to satisfy the arms control requirements requires the sort of long-term intensive work that we saw in the lead-up to the 2015 Iran Deal.
President Trump is known for his love of big, flashy moments, as seen in his headline-grabbing summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which failed to bring about any practical results.
There is a risk of another failure here. Trump would need to show an uncharacteristic dose of patience and diplomatic acumen to turn around a complex deal with Iran. This will also test the skills of others on his team. As lawmakers, Rubio and Walz were given to bombastic speeches, lashing out at Iran and other adversaries of the US. Conducting diplomacy that could achieve the desired results is a wholly different beast.
US President-elect Donald Trump gestures as he attends a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, DC, on November 13, 2024.
'Peace through strength'
But before Trump gets to any diplomacy, he will likely enjoy intimidating Iran. His consistent motto has been "peace through strength," something that fits his instincts and style. In the same vein, he is likely to start with the return of his maximum-pressure policies on Iran. Although Iran already feels like the most sanctioned country in the world, if Trump were to enforce the oil sanctions more aggressively, it could hit Iran hard. For a country currently organising scheduled electricity cuts every day, a significant loss of hard currency will be a harsh blow.
The Iranian regime is obsessed with requesting 'respect' from the US, and it will try hard not to look humiliated as it has to go back to negotiating with Trump, the man who killed the regime's most treasured symbol, Soleimani. Already, the pundits are preparing justifications. Some point out the fact that Iranian emissaries met with Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the early 1990s, only a few years after the devastating 1980-88 war in which tens of thousands of Iranians perished. Others turn the clock back and remind us that Prophet Mohammad even negotiated with the murderers of his uncle Hamza, who was a key military leader in the early Muslim community. If the Prophet could forgive the killers of Hamza, surely Iran could forgive Trump.
As it finds its 'Axis of Resistance' weakened by Israel's persistent campaigns, its economy in shambles under isolation and its population restive with discontent, Iran is in a desperate state and will likely give the necessary concessions to make a deal with Trump. This could include not just a nuclear deal but refraining from hitting Israel directly or indirectly, at least for the time being.
Such a deal would have the added benefit of having buy-in from the US's Arab allies in the region, chiefly Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries who have normalised ties with Iran in the past few years. Seeking to focus on economic development, they have a vested interest in avoiding a broader conflagration in the region and are likely to welcome such a deal. This is in marked contrast to the 2015 deal of Obama, which was received coldly and cautiously in the region, but also to Trump's first term when Riyadh and its Arab allies didn't have diplomatic ties with Tehran.
An Iranian woman walks past a mural depicting a mock version of the Great Seal of the US, with the eagle holding syringes and ammunition cartridges on the outer walls of the former US embassy in Tehran on November 6, 2024.
Regional implications
The coming talks between Iran and the US will also help shape the future of the Middle East, given that Iran is in a delicate stage of flux. Ayatollah Khamenei is 85 and is not expected to live much longer. The hardliners who promote the most uncompromising version of his revolutionary vision are in relative political decline.
Other than the Supreme Leader, many positions of power in the country now belong to those with centrist tendencies, such as President Pezeshkian. Even Ali Larijani—who seemed out of favour and was twice, in 2021 and 2024, barred from running for the presidency—was picked by Khamenei to travel to Syria and Lebanon with messages for al-Assad and Lebanon's parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri.
These figures are much more likely to welcome a deal with the US and a tempering of Iran's adventurous foreign policy with its impossible goals of destroying Israel and confronting the US everywhere. If the likes of Pezeshkian and Larijani are able to help Tehran reach a historic deal with Trump that would give Iran a diplomatic and economic breathing space, they will likely solidify their hold on power during the coming succession crisis and help bring about a new Iran—a final twilight of the 1979 revolution.
A deal with Trump, in other words, might be key to the future of Iran and, in turn, the future of the region. But precisely because the stakes are so high, the path to such a deal will likely be long and bumpy.
