Iran Loath to Be Drawn Into New Clash With US as Trump Returns

(Bloomberg) -- The last time Donald Trump was US president it spelled disaster for Iran — he walked away from a landmark nuclear deal, derailed the country’s economy with sanctions and killed its most revered general. 

This time around, the signals from the Trump camp are more mixed. The president-elect has suggested he wants to stabilize the relationship, yet he and some of his Cabinet nominees have also called for Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and return to the “maximum pressure” campaign of his first term. 

The New York Times reported Thursday that billionaire Elon Musk — a confidante of Trump who has sat in on at least one call with foreign leaders — met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, to discuss easing tensions between Washington and Tehran. 

Iravani’s office in New York declined to comment on the story, which has been re-published in Iranian state media and hasn’t yet been denied by Iranian officials. It put out a statement later Friday saying cease-fires could be achieved in Gaza and Lebanon if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “dethroned or restrained.’

On the surface, there seems to be little for the US and Iran to discuss. Under Trump, the US assassinated a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani. And the US Justice Department last month detailed an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump in the runup to the election.

Even so, the meeting could suggest that Trump — or the people around him — are at least willing to talk, and consider the possibility of a softer stance. It also suggests Tehran may realize it can’t afford another major standoff with a longtime nemesis. The Islamic Republic is struggling with economic challenges brought about by years of sanctions, while its allied militant groups are embroiled in an ongoing and punishing war with US ally Israel. 

“There are currently more trial balloons in the air from Tehran than there are at a country fair,” Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told a call on US-Iran relations held by the Stimson Center think tank.

Iran hasn’t had formal diplomatic ties with the US since soon after the 1979 revolution, when an Islamist government ousted the pro-Western Shah and took over the state. The two have since been locked in a cold war that has occasionally threatened to erupt into open conflict. 

At the core of the Islamic Republic’s regional policy is its unflinching hostility and opposition to the state of Israel — which has only increased since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. Israel has since expanded the conflict to target Lebanon-based Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are designated terrorist organizations by the US. 

Iran-US enmity has been interrupted for only brief periods, one of which came via the 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on Iran’s atomic activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from that deal in 2018 and imposed even harsher sanctions.

The US has warned of Iranian plots to kill Americans linked to Trump’s first-term Iran policies. But Iran sought to reassure the US last month that it doesn’t want to kill Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Iranian General

Official Iranian statements on Trump’s election have so far avoided much mention of Soleimani, the venerated commander of an elite IRGC unit killed in a US drone attack in January 2020. 

“We must manage to reduce the costs and tensions,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said of the US on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the Islamic Republic’s leaders are trying to figure out what Trump and his Cabinet nominees mean for US policy. On the one hand, Trump himself has said he wants a new deal with Iran as long as it doesn’t seek a nuclear weapon.

“We’re not looking to do damage to Iran, but they have — they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters the day after the election.

But before the Nov. 5 vote, Trump said President Joe Biden had been wrong to tell Israel not to target Iranian nuclear sites.

“When they asked him that question the answer should have been, ‘Hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later,”’ he told a rally in North Carolina.

And Trump has nominated some politicians — including Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Elise Stefanik for United Nations ambassador — who have called for a return to “maximum pressure” and suggested Israel should be given the green light to bomb Iran.

“Israel should respond to Iran the way the US would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us,” Rubio wrote in a social media post after Iran attacked Israel in October.

Musk’s reported meeting with Iravani — a veteran Iranian official who has worked in the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — coincided with a statement from Tehran unequivocally rejecting the idea that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist elected earlier this year after the sudden death of hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, said Iran wants to resolve “ambiguities and alleged doubts about our country’s peaceful nuclear activities,” according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. 

Pezeshkian was speaking after meeting Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, who was visiting Tehran for the first time since Pezeshkian took office. The trip involved a rare, public appearance Friday at the Fordow nuclear facility, which Israel has threatened to attack.

“There is a sense here that the approach to the US may have softened,” said Saeed Laylaz, an economist and one-time advisor to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. “We have some major domestic and economic challenges to deal with that the public needs to be prepared for.” 

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