Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump

NY Times-Nov11th2024

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 Pezeshkian’s government agree, according to five Iranian officials who asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to discuss government policy.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.

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.