Iran’s big question about US election: Will Trump or Harris seek diplomacy?

Tehran, Iran – When the United States elects its president, the impact of its choice is felt around the world, and few countries are as directly affected as Iran.

But as the US votes on Tuesday in an election in which Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are running neck-and-neck, according to the final opinion polls, Iran is grappling with a particularly challenging reality, analysts say: Tensions with Washington appear poised to remain sky-high regardless of who ends up in the White House.

Democrat Harris and Republican Trump are gunning for the presidency at a time when a third major Iranian strike on Israel appears almost certain and concerns over an all-out regional war persist.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has promised a “tooth-crushing” response to Israel in retaliation for its first-ever claimed air strikes on Tehran and multiple other provinces on October 26.

Commanders with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are suggesting their next action against Israel – which is expected to involve the Iranian army as well after four army soldiers were killed by Israeli bombs – will involve more advanced projectiles.

Against this backdrop, both presidential candidates in the US have been expressing hardline views about Tehran. Harris called Iran the “greatest adversary” of the US last month while Trump advocated for Israel hitting Iranian nuclear facilities.

At the same time, both have signalled that they will be willing to engage diplomatically with Iran.

Speaking to reporters in New York in September, Trump said he was open to restarting negotiations on a nuclear deal. “We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said.

Harris has previously also supported a return to nuclear talks although her tone towards Iran has hardened more recently.

According to Tehran-based political analyst Diako Hosseini, the big question for Iran amid all of this is which of the two presidential candidates might be more prepared to manage tensions.

“Trump provides excessive support to Israel while Harris is highly committed to the mainstream US agenda against Iran,” he told Al Jazeera.

History of tensions

The history of the two candidates will also heavily impact their potential future relations with Tehran.

A year after becoming president in 2017, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, imposing the harshest-ever US sanctions on Iran, which encompassed its entire economy.

He also ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and its second most powerful man after the supreme leader. Soleimani, the commander-in-chief of the Quds Force of the IRGC, was killed along with a senior Iraqi commander by a US drone in Iraq in January 2020.

After taking office in January 2021, the current US president, Joe Biden, and Harris continued with the enforcement of Trump’s sanctions, including during the years when Iran was dealing with the deadliest outbreak of COVID-19 in the Middle East, which killed close to 150,000 people.

The Biden administration has also considerably added to those sanctions, blacklisting many dozens more individuals and entities with the announced aim of targeting Iranian exports, limiting its military capabilities and punishing human rights abuses.

After an Iranian missile attack on Israel last month, Washington expanded sanctions on Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors to negatively impact its crude exports to China, which had rebounded and grew over the past few years despite the sanctions.

Trump has claimed he will choke off resilient Iranian exports through better enforcement of the sanctions.

“Pursuing diplomacy with Trump is much harder for Iran due to the assassination of General Soleimani, but it’s not impossible,” Hosseini said.

“However, if a potential Harris administration is willing, Iran would not have any major obstacles for direct bilateral talks. Nevertheless, Iran is well and realistically aware that regardless of who takes over the White House as president, diplomacy with Washington is now considerably much more difficult than any other time.”

Since the US withdrawal from the landmark nuclear accord, all dialogue with the US – including failed efforts to revive the comatose nuclear agreement and a prisoner exchange deal last year – has been held indirectly and through intermediaries like Qatar and Oman.

‘Tactics might change’

The government of President Masoud Pezeshkian, comprised of representatives from reformist to hardline political factions within the Iranian establishment, has tried to strike a tone that projects both moderation and strength.

Pezeshkian said in a speech on Monday that Iran has been engaged in an “all-out economic war” and must stand up to its opponents by boosting its local economy. He has also repeatedly said he wants to work to get the sanctions removed and is open to talks with the West.

“It is strange that the Zionist regime and its backers keep making claims about human rights. Violence, genocide, crimes and murder are behind their apparently neat facade and neckties,” the president said during his latest speech.

Speaking to state television on Monday night, Iran’s top diplomat said Tehran “does not put that much value” into who wins the presidential race in the US.

“The country’s main strategies will not be impacted by these things. Tactics might change, and things might be accelerated or delayed, but we will never compromise on our fundamentals and goals,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

Araghchi travelled to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday, where he discussed the “threats posed by the Zionist regime and the regional crisis” with top officials, including army chief General Asim Munir.

The IRGC continues to carry out a large-scale military operation in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, where there have recently been multiple armed attacks by a separatist group that Iran believes is backed by Israel.

The Jaish al-Adl group killed 10 members of the Iranian armed forces in the province on October 26 in a strike condemned by the United Nations Security Council as a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”.

Since the attack, the IRGC said it has killed eight members of the group and arrested 14.