Khamenei’s American reality check

A shorter version of this article appeared here.
 

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, the main question in Tehran is not so much what the incoming American president will do about Iran. Rather, it is about whether Tehran should negotiate with him. Numerous Iranian officials, including former senior diplomats, are making the case that Tehran should not forget it has agency and should signal to Trump that Iran is willing to negotiate. According to this view, Trump’s strong mandate following the Nov. 5 elections in the United States gives him latitude to cut a deal with Iran — and one that could be mutually advantageous. It remains to be seen whether such calls will shape Tehran’s posture following Trump’s inauguration.

No war, no peace?

Back in 2018, a few months after first-term President Trump withdrew from the previous administration’s 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) with Iran and announced the launch of a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against the country, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to reassure an anxious Iranian population by famously saying, “even if we ever — impossible as it is — negotiated with the US, it would never be with the current US administration.”

President Trump was persistent during his first term — he wanted a new deal with Iran and persuaded Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to take a personal message to Khamenei in Tehran, which was again rebuffed by the Iranian leader. “I don’t consider Trump worthy of sending a message to,” he told Abe. Khamenei gambled that Trump was an anomaly in American politics that Tehran could weather. That was a risky gamble then and a worse one now, with Trump back in the White House for another four years.

Khamenei’s adherence to this line of thinking during 2018-2020 took place before the impact of renewed US-led sanctions crushed Iran’s economy — when Iran’s oil income plummeted and most of its trade was cut off from much of the world — and before Tehran and Washington came close to war after Trump’s decision to assassinate Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. In today’s world, Trump is politically stronger than when he first was president, and Iran’s domestic and foreign challenges are vastly more serious.

Iran’s domestic media is airing pleas from all corners of the country for Khamenei to accept a reality check. As one political commentator expressed it, “the era of no war, no peace is over. It’s now the era of either war or peace.” And time is of the essence. Two basic truths stand out, as the argument goes: the Republican Party now controls all three branches of US government, and it will do as Trump says. In other words, if Iran can reach a deal with Trump, it will be an agreement far more likely to pass and endure than President Barack Obama’s JCPOA, which faced Republican opposition and subversion from the get-go.

The flip side is equally underscored by Iranian commentators — while Trump sells himself as an anti-war figure, his highly unorthodox style of governing means that nothing can be ruled out. And if Trump decides to use limited but crushing military means to punish Iran for the latter’s possible intransigence, then Iranian strategic assets, including its nuclear program facilities, are at risk.

In any event, with a Republican-controlled Congress behind him, President Trump can go to war with a freer hand than any other US commander-in-chief since George W. Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That is at least true until the next US elections for the House of Representatives in 2026, leaving Trump’s hands equally open for war or peace, according to the argument made by some pro-negotiation voices in Tehran.

Will Trump give Khamenei a face-saving option?

For now, figures close to Khamenei are indicating a willingness to wait and see what Trump will do in the Middle East and regarding Iran before deciding whether negotiations with him are possible. As Ali Larijani, a returning and relatively moderate advisor to Khamenei, put it, “Trump did not act wisely last time [when he was president]. But he may have gained more experience and might follow a more constructive path [toward Iran].” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has urged Trump not to reconstruct his “maximum pressure” campaign but rather to shoot for “maximum wisdom” in dealing with Iran, in which case Tehran could be expected to respond in kind to avoid conflict.

To be sure, the Iranians have no fond memories of the first Trump presidential term. From his “Muslim ban” to his campaign of sanctions to listing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity to his assassination of Soleimani, Trump did a lot to unnerve the Iranian government. But when in office, Trump always maintained he was willing to talk to Iran — on his terms.

Most famously, in 2018, his administration issued a list of 12 demands, which Tehran dismissed as a call for its full surrender. Trump’s declaration that the architect behind the 12-point list, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will not be offered a role in the next Trump administration is the sort of sign Tehran wishes to see: that the president-elect might keep anti-Iran hawks out of his administration and prepare the ground for a give-and-take bargain with Tehran. The makeup of Trump’s incoming national security team, however, is still a work in progress. The outcome of the struggle between the so-called foreign policy hawks and the isolationist doves is yet to be determined, a development Tehran will be watching with eagle eyes in the coming weeks.

In a way, a compromise between Trump and Khamenei can be straightforward. Trump’s only and often-stated ultimatum is that Iran not weaponize its nuclear program. Washington has no intention of toppling the regime in Tehran, according to Brian Hook, Trump’s previous Iran envoy who is reportedly playing a leading role in the next administration’s State Department transition efforts. Meanwhile, according to the generally understood interpretation of a fatwa issued by Khamenei in 2012, nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and, therefore, prohibited. Reality is, of course, somewhat more complicated.

Khamenei’s nuclear weapons ban was also in place in 2018, when Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal. US-Iranian tensions are rooted in much more than just the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, including the latter country’s controversial regional agenda. But even here there might be some space for compromise.

Possible regional off-ramps

As of now, Tehran is hopeful that Trump can persuade, if not force, Israel to accept a cease-fire in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Such a development could give the Iranians more space to pursue talks with Trump on select regional issues on which compromise might appeal to both sides. Tehran’s present regional diplomacy speaks to such a possibility.

Khamenei advisor Larijani visited Damascus and Beirut last week with a two-pronged message from his boss that Trump’s re-election is not a death sentence for the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance, a collection of militant proxy organization spanning the Middle East. Larijani reportedly aimed to reassure Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Hezbollah about Iran’s commitment to its Arab partners while also making the case for agreeing to a ceasefire, even if it means accepting the effort led by US special envoy Amos Hochstein to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah.

Nonetheless, the Iranian regime still must decide whether it is willing, in the long run, to reconstruct its regional agenda in ways that are more acceptable to the US and its Arab and Israeli partners. This sort of soul-searching is inevitable for a regime that is under huge domestic and foreign pressure to change course; but for now, officials in Tehran are prioritizing preserving as much of the Axis of Resistance as possible versus fundamentally rethinking the model’s future.

In any event, Khamenei is in a difficult spot. During 2018 and 2019, he repeatedly rejected Trump’s calls for direct talks. But Iran is under significantly more pressure today, from both the pain caused by US-led sanctions and the major regional setbacks resulting from Israeli actions against the Iran-led Axis of Resistance. Consequently, Tehran has plenty of reasons to give negotiations with Trump a chance, even though such talks may be awkward and the results uncertain.

The message coming out of Tehran is loud and clear: If Khamenei can find a way to get over his total rejection of Trump, then talks are evidently possible. There are a few basic facts that should guide Khamenei’s thinking. First, he will need to rid himself of the notion that it is immaterial who sits in the White House as far as American Iran policy is concerned. Trump’s Iran policy 2.0 is yet to be determined given the incoming American president’s unpredictability on the one hand and penchant for deals on the other. And whatever Trump ends up doing about Iran, it will not look like what Presidents Obama or Joe Biden did. Second, although Trump presumably still wants a deal with Tehran, some of his surrogates might have a tougher approach in mind. At a minimum, Tehran has an opportunity in the next few weeks to shape Trump’s thinking on the subject.

For his part, Khamenei does not fear the return of the maximum pressure campaign for the simple reason that it never went away under Biden. The outgoing US administration did not enforce sanctions on Iran with the same intensity Trump’s first administration did, but it never gave Tehran any official relief from those sanctions either. Nor can Trump’s second term deepen the pain of maximum pressure on Iran. China, the buyer of about 90% of Iran’s oil, will not cut Iran loose this time around, given heightened US-China tensions. Meanwhile, the Arab states are all busy staying out of any possible US-Iran collision and will not want to throw their support behind Washington to protect themselves against Iran’s wrath in the event of a regional conflict.

From Tehran’s point of view, at best, the next Trump administration could trigger snapback sanctions (a provision of the 2015 nuclear deal) on Iran since this time around, Europe — which is angry at Tehran for supporting the Russian war in Ukraine — might join in, unlike the last time Trump was in the White House. In contrast to the US position, the European powers are still officially adhering to the 2015 deal and can push for resumption of international sanctions on Iran. At worst, Trump will give Israel more space and the necessary tools to go after Iran in the region to dismantle the Axis of Resistance without direct American involvement.

One thing is certain: This time around, no official in Tehran can afford to brush Trump off as a mad man. Before he was assassinated on Trump’s order, Soleimani taunted the American president: “Trump, you gambler! I am your opponent.” In today’s Tehran, the majority opinion seems to be to gamble not for war but for a compromise with the second Trump administration.

Alex Vatanka is the director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute. His most recent book is The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979. @AlexVatanka

Photo by Iranian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images