Distorting realities, ignoring nuances and hijacking people’s fears: that’s the recipe for a demagogue who lives not on his own wits but others’ miseries. It is particularly bad when the person or the country being targeted by that demagogue does little to straighten things out, which is exactly what is happening right now with Iran and Donald Trump.

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Iranians know too well from their own experience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their hardline former president, how dangerous it is to have a politician telling you passionately half of the truth without caring that the other half is often a lie or a distortion of facts.

Trump’s increasingly bellicose approach towards Iran, first by imposing a blanket travel ban, then putting Tehran “on notice” after a ballistic missile test, as well as by reported plans of new sanctions, carries two subtle messages. The first message is that Iranophobia is going to be his adopted weapon to distract attentions at home, appeal strongly to the US’s wealthy Arab allies who are already welcoming him as a moderate president, and please Benjamin Netanyahu. Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, reacting on Twitter to the missile test, is right to point out that Iran only spends a fraction on defence compared to the US’s Arab allies in the region, which are big recipients of US, UK and French arms.

Trump’s second message, albeit one barely admitted by his officials, is that his administration’s problem is not just with the Iranian state, but with its people too. His executive order suspending all entries to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries affects Iranians to a greater extent than it does nationals from the other six states.

There are more Iranians in the US, and far more Iranian students are likely to be affected by the new measures than those from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen put together. Last year, there were 12,269 Iranian students studying in the US, according to data by the Institute of International Education, compared to 5,085 from the six other countries. Iranians are struggling to understand why they are being targeted in this way.

The most high-profile Iranian affected by the recent travel ban so far has not been an Iranian revolutionary guard, but Asghar Farhadi, the award-winning Iranian director whose new film The Salesman has earned him a nomination for a second Oscar. Images that came out of airports were heartbreaking but inadvertently showed how successful Iranians are in the US. There were Harvard-bound Iranian sisters detained, scientists stranded, artists in limbo.



Iranians expatriates in the US have indeed been immensely successful. In fact, Iran’s brain drain problem is due to the many talented students who emigrate to the US. Omid Kordestani, the executive chairman of Twitter, the very platform Trump uses to broadcast his views on a daily basis, is Iranian. The founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, is Iranian. Maryam Mirzakhani, who won the Fields Medal, the highest accolade in mathematics, in 2014, is another example.

No American national has been killed by an Iranian on US soil since 1975 and the US has produced more Islamic State fighters than Iran has. Yet for over a decade, the US has viewed Iran and its nuclear activities as its biggest threat.

Now Iran has shut down most of that programme and agreed to a high level of inspection currently not applied to any other country. But the US is still worried. What is increasingly clear is that the US will remain worried so long as the Islamic Republic is in power.

This is not to say that Iran is not involved in any fishy business. At home, the country’s human rights record remains dismal. A number of political prisoners are languishing in jail, with some on hunger strike. Religious minorities are discriminated against and the country has a high rate of executions. The biggest current problem is Iran’s involvement in Syria, where it is staunchly supporting the brutal Bashar al-Assad, although large segments of Iranian society are critical about it, as seen in a funeral that turned into a rare display of dissent earlier this month. But Trump’s focus on Iran has been disproportionate, politically biased and overblown.

The threat to Iran is not just from Trump but rather the combination of a reckless, ignorant leader, surrounded by hawks blind to nuances on the ground and bent on regime change. Some of his senior appointees have backed MEK, a fringe Iranian opposition group extremely unpopular in Iran. They fought alongside Saddam Hussain against Iran in the eight-year war in the 1980s. Breitbart, the American news website closely linked to the Trump administration, recently pushed the claims of the former Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, introducing him as the alternative to Iran’s problem. Pahlavi does not have a strong base in Iran and the monarchy, despite occasional nostalgia for its glories, remains unpopular.

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Iran, too, has to do more. It should learn how demonising another country can backfire and should do all it can to keep Europe on its side. This is why if Iran wants to win support at this critical moment, the continuing detention of British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe does exactly the opposite. Iran should realise how such poor treatment of innocent people affects minds in the west. For its own sake, as well as hers, it should release her.

Iranians have paid a high price for the inflammatory statements of their statesmen, but they have paid a bigger price for the ignorance of the opposite side to domestic politics in Iran, its lack of knowledge about the country’s history. Trump’s behaviour only plays into the hands of hardliners in Iran, particularly those who want to show the president, Hassan Rouhani, was wrong to find peace with the west.

For nearly 38 years, Iranian leaders have failed to convince their people that the US, which they call “the Great Satan”, was their “enemy” too. Trump’s first fortnight in office suggests that he may do that job for them.

