Blog

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — In the final moments of Iran’s last televised presidential debate, one of the top candidates for the succession the late hardliner President Ebrahim Raisi invoked the name of the person who, perhaps more than anyone else, has contributed to changing the course of the Islamic Republic’s relations with the rest of the world in recent years.

The next president could be “forced to either sell Iran to Trump or trigger dangerous tensions in the country” if economic problems are not resolved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament and a candidate in Friday’s election.

President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal led to the reintroduction of devastating sanctions and largely cut Tehran off from the global economy. This worsened the political climate in Iran, which was already affected by Mass protests over economic problems and women’s rightsAn escalating series of attacks on land and sea followed. Tehran also began enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels..

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the war that followed on militants in the Gaza Strip only added fuel to the fire that now threatens to burn almost every corner of the Middle East. Iran’s support for a range of militias, including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and its unprecedented direct attack on Israel during the war have made it a direct party to the conflict.

The future of the war and Iran’s future could depend directly on the United States. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called them the “Great Satan,” and even today they are insulted at major events, such as a speech by 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week.

Despite the vitriol, the US is a recurring theme in the election campaign. Khamenei warned this week against supporting candidates who “think that all roads to progress lead through America.” a barely veiled criticism of the only reformist In the race is Masoud Pezeshkian, who is fully committed to a return to the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Trump is a recurring theme among the six presidential candidates. One of them, hardliner Amir Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi, who is currently vice president, claimed that if Trump wins the US presidential election, “we can negotiate with Trump and impose our demands on him.”

Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi disagreed. He warned that Iran should now enter into talks with the US before Trump potentially becomes president for a second time. However, his campaign team also printed a poster showing the cleric and Trump in profile and saying: “I am the one who can stand up to Trump!”

Hardline candidate Saeed Jalili also mocked his rivals, saying they were “afraid” of Trump and vowing to fight him.

Trump, for his part, has mentioned Iran in recent days on the campaign trail. On the podcast “All In,” Trump reiterated that he wanted to “make a fair deal with Iran” – while trying to claim that Iran’s theocratic government, which has long called for Israel’s destruction, had somehow signed a diplomatic recognition treaty with Israel, as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had done during his presidency.

“A child could have made a deal with them – and Biden did nothing,” Trump claimed.

Interestingly, President Joe Biden’s name was not mentioned during the Iranian election debates. Before Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash in May, the US under Biden had held several rounds of indirect talks with Iranian officials.

While the Biden administration has been critical of Iran in general, especially after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 and the women’s rights protests that followed, it has opened the door for Iran to access some frozen assets abroad. This includes a deal that a prisoner exchange between the countries in Septemberless than a month before the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

And then there are Iran’s oil sales. Although technically under sanctions, Iran recently reported selling 2.5 million barrels a day – with the lion’s share likely going to China, possibly at a discount. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who secured the nuclear deal under relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani and now supports reformist candidate Pezeshkian, attributed those sales directly to the Biden administration’s policies.

“The increase in crude oil sales was not the work of our friends, but when Biden came to power, they pursued the policy of loosening the sanctions bolt,” Zarif said, indirectly referring to hardliners. “Let Trump come and find out what our friends will do.”

While broader talks with world powers to resume the nuclear deal in Vienna failed, Biden may be trying to repeat a strategy from his time as vice president under Barack Obama: quietly working indirectly with the Iranians toward an agreement that can be brought to the table later.

But much of the Biden administration’s planned US policy for the Middle East – including a possible Saudi security agreement that could lead to diplomatic recognition of Israel by Riyadh – was turned upside down by the war between Israel and Hamas.

The real wild card for Iran is November 5, when the US will hold a presidential election. Biden’s re-election would likely mean a continuation of the carrot-and-stick approach he has taken so far in office. If Trump is re-elected, that could herald further talks on a deal, but also pose risks. Trump launched a drone strike in 2020 that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani and continued to insist on his desire for an agreement with Tehran.

A war between Israel and Lebanon – or the Houthis could receive a missile attack on an American warship as part of their campaign – could also drastically turn the calculations in both Tehran and Washington on their head.

Currently, however, tensions between Iran and the United States remain, as they have been for decades.

___

Jon Gambrellthe Gulf and Iran news director for The Associated Press, has reported from all Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and elsewhere around the world since joining AP in 2006.