Fears Tehran will suffer under Trump are countered by view that Iran copes better with a Republican in the White House

A cartoon in the Iranian satirical magazine Khat-khati depicts former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a student at the lectern of his teacher, Donald Trump. “Excuse me,” the hardliner says, “do you have a course handout?”



Iranians often make jokes to digest political upheaval, and Trump’s rise to power has drawn comparisons with that of a leader closer to home – one whose eight years in office marked a deterioration in Iran-US relations.



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Trump’s transition so far has not been encouraging to Tehran: Michael Flynn, named as his national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, his choice for the head of the CIA, have been vociferous in their opposition to Iran.

The CIA’s outgoing director, John Brennan, has warned the US president-elect of “disastrous” consequences if he goes ahead with his campaign pledge to tear up a landmark deal with Iran over nuclear weapons.

However, politicians in Iran appear less anxious. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, went as far as praising Trump before the election, saying that “because that man spoke more candidly and more openly, the people of America paid more attention to him”.

Ali Motahari, an influential MP, said after Trump’s win that his presidency was to Iran’s advantage because Democrats “would chop your head with cotton”, a Persian idiom which means killing someone with kindness, and reflecting a view that the Islamic Republic has historically coped better with the Republicans.

“Some in Iran were actually eager for a Trump presidency,” said Tehran University professor Naser Hadian. “They think that Trump lacks international credibility and that there is a great deal of unpredictability involved, so that may be a positive thing. And given his views about Putin and Syria, a narrative has been created in Iran that Trump may not actually be bad for Iran.

“Trump is a pragmatist. You never know whether he would do any deals with Iran behind the scenes.”

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Iran’s own pragmatists, notably the current president, Hassan Rouhani, however, don’t share that view, said Hadian. The fate of the nuclear accord is of great significance.While Hadian believes Trump is unlikely to tear it up, there are fears that he would instead stifle Tehran’s reconnection to the global economy by tightening non-nuclear sanctions relating to human rights or terrorism.



Khamenei, who said “we neither mourn nor celebrate” Trump’s win, has threatened to retaliate if the US approved extending sanctions for another 10 years, which he said would “surely be against” the agreement.



The deal, agreed in July 2015 between Iran, the five permanent UN security council members, Germany and the EU, sought to put controls on Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions and return of frozen assets.

Sadeq Zibakalam, a rare critical voice of the establishment inside the country, said Europeans had largely been supportive of the deal and that he did not foresee any big changes in the short term. “Trump can only act for America. Europeans don’t want the deal to be revoked,” he told the Guardian.



“Total [the oil and gas company] recently came to Iran for investment a couple of weeks ago, and even BP was here last week. It shows that the UK and France and even Germans are serious about business with Iran,” he said.



All the signals from the EU suggest it wants to keep the deal. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has made clear that the Iran nuclear agreement “is not a bilateral agreement between the US and Iran”, reminding the president-elect that he cannot unilaterally tear up an agreement endorsed by the UN. The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is understood to be keen to visit Tehran early next year.



A spokeswoman for the UK Foreign Office said the deal “marked a major step forward in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability and in normalising Iran’s relations with the international community” and that “Britain will carry on working closely with international partners on the deal’s continued implementation and success”.

An Iranian government official told the Guardian that Tehran was not expecting the deal to be ditched under Trump, and reality will hit when he enters the White House. “America, however, is like a huge ship steaming in a tiny river,” the official added. “It can create tsunamis which can destroy the little ships.”

Hossein Rassam, former Iran adviser to the FCO, said Trump could play into the hands of hardliners who wish to limit change in Iran. “It would help hardliners prove to Rouhani and those who support the idea of engagement with the outside world in general and with the US in particular that there could be no friendship between the two,” he said.



“They want to immunise the Islamic Republic against intrusion [known locally as nofooz]. When someone like Trump is in power, the chances of that happening would substantially decrease.”



The thawing of diplomatic ice between Tehran and Washington, referred by some as a honeymoon, however, is over. It was a “fake honeymoon” to begin with, Rassam said. “Parties to this marriage were in it only partially because each side had a lot of issues back home, and knowing that when this is over they would have to go back home and deal with some reality.”

Internally, the stakes for Rouhani are high. In May, he will have to face re-election for a second term. “Rouhani’s chances of seeking re-election now face a challenge,” Naser Imani, an analyst close to the conservative camp, told Tasnim news. “If Trump pursues serious actions on foreign policy and the nuclear deal, then Rouhani’s chances of re-election can be affected.”

For now, many in Tehran are keeping their fingers crossed, although realists, like parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, have cautioned politicians against knee-jerk reactions.

Rassam said financial prospects for Iran were not great but many in Tehran hoped that they could capitalise on the estrangement between the US and Europe like when former reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power. “From their point of view, there is some threat, but there is also the chance of that period of Iran-EU relationship happening again.”