Can Trump Achieve a Diplomatic Breakthrough With Iran?

The Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, Donald Trump, recently made several statements suggesting his readiness to engage in a more constructive relationship with Iran than has been the case for the better part of the last 45 years, since anti-American revolutionaries toppled the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.

In mid-August, Trump said he hoped for “friendly relations” with Iran. In early September, at the Economic Club of New York, he spoke about how Washington’s addiction to sanctions weakens the dollar’s hegemonic position in the world by forcing countries like Iran, Russia and China to ditch it in favor of alternative financial arrangements, undermining America’s global position.

Trump’s narrative on this point is sensible. To get a sense of the perspective, one only needs to look at the expansion of BRICS, initially a grouping comprising China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa. Since 2024, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Ethiopia have joined it. Turkey—a NATO ally—has applied to join. Reportedly, more countries have expressed interest in exploring the idea, including some of those with which the U.S. has close security relationships, such as Azerbaijan.

While at first sight BRICS may not amount to more than summitry and earnest communiques about the advent of a multipolar world, one key incentive for countries to consider joining are the prospects—so far, mostly tentative—to find alternatives to dollar for their trade and investments, in order to shield themselves from the weaponization of dollar for geopolitical purposes by Washington. Considering that BRICS after its expansion now represents 45 percent of the world population, Trump’s concerns about the U.S. sanctions overreach are fully justified.

The question: Can he pull off a genuine change in the U.S. approach? Iran, a country with which the U.S. has the most entrenched and seemingly intractable conflict, could be a good litmus test for Trump’s abilities.

The precedents do not invite much optimism. During his first term, Trump wrecked the nuclear deal with Iran known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was delivering on its objective to keep Iran away from the nuclear bomb. He imposed new sanctions against Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign devised, in theory, to deliver a “better deal” with Tehran but in reality, thanks to ultra-hawkish advisers like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, amounting to no less than pursuit of a regime change in yet another Middle Eastern nation.

Trump did try occasionally to reach out to Iran. As Trita Parsi, the executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute, reminds us, in 2017 and 2018 he sought meetings with Iran’s then-President Hassan Rouhani and, through the mediation of the Republican Senator Rand Paul, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. 

Those meetings, however, never materialized, as Tehran did not respond to Trump’s entreaties. That happened, primarily, not because of some ideological animus towards the “Great Satan,” but because the policymakers in Tehran calculated that accepting a meeting would validate the “maximum pressure” strategy and allow Trump to brag about its success without removing any sanctions. There was no reason why Tehran was going to hand this diplomatic victory to Trump for free.

The situation was further complicated by Trump’s order to assassinate General Qasem Soleimani, the influential commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’s elite Al-Quds force. Given Soleimani’s status as a de-facto operational leader of the Tehran-led “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East, dealing with Trump poses seemingly insurmountable political and ideological challenges for Tehran.

Yet, despite this, Tehran may have incentives to test Trump’s intentions should he win the elections in November. For one thing, the lesson of the JCPOA—which Trump destroyed but his Democratic successor Joe Biden failed to restore—is that the deals concluded with the Republicans have a better chance of standing. Contrast the fate of the JCPOA with that of the Abraham Accords, signed under Trump’s watch and built upon by Biden.

The lesson is that the Republicans are willing to renege on the deals made by the Democrats, but the Democrats are happy to live with the deals made by the Republicans.

For Trump, however, to get a “yes” for an answer from Tehran would take more than occasional vows on the campaign trail and belief in his own transactional abilities. A skillful, patient diplomacy is needed.

First, Trump needs to entrust his Iran policy to those few Republicans who, like Senator Paul and Colonel Douglas McGregor, seem open to dealing with Tehran. Exponents of the America First foreign policy, such as the vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance and prospective national security adviser Elbridge Colby do display some pro-restraint tendencies, but those are mostly focused on Russia and Ukraine. On Iran, they mostly stick to a conventionally hawkish Washington consensus. However, they are unlikely to push for Pompeo and Bolton-style regime change policies.

Then, Trump needs to use the momentum from the reformist administration in Tehran showing signs of readiness of re-engaging with Washington. With the veterans of nuclear diplomacy, such as the foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, back in charge, lines of communication could be re-established. The current government in Tehran strives to diversify the nation’s foreign policy, and recent tensions with Russia over diverging interests in the South Caucasus show the limits of the one-sided “turn East” orientation pursued by the previous administration. Above all, Iran’s dire economic situation requires some form of sanction relief, from which the U.S. businesses could also benefit. That last point is surely not lost on Trump when he complained in 2016 that, as a result of the nuclear deal under President Barack Obama, it was the European and Chinese, not American, companies that benefited. 
Finally, Trump should take advantage of Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’s unwise strategy of trying to out-hawk Trump on Iran by criticizing his “feckless policies” in office (meaning alleged failure to respond militarily to Iran’s strikes on the U.S. bases in Iraq, themselves undertaken as a retaliation for Soleimani’s assassination). He should leave the repetition of the hawkish Washington boilerplate platitudes to his opponent, and instead run as a pro-peace, pro-business candidate committed to extracting the U.S. from the pointless enmities and endless wars.