Both Harris and Trump may want a deal with a ‘desperate and vulnerable’ Iran

The 2024 US presidential election has been the backdrop for some eyebrow-raising statements about Iran from the candidates. 

US Vice President Kamala Harris surprised many when she said the Islamic Republic of Iran was the US’s “obvious” top geopolitical foe as opposed to China or Russia. In an interview last week, former US President Donald Trump said that if he was still in the White House, Iran would have joined the normalisation deals with Israel, known as the Abraham Accords.

Election day is less than one week away. Whichever candidate wins, their approach to Iran is likely going to set the course for their administration’s overall Middle East policy. 

Foreign policy insiders and surrogates in both the Trump and Harris campaigns who spoke with Middle East Eye agree on one thing: that Iran has been weakened by the conflicts spawned by the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel. 

Iran was knocked on its back heels by Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran over the summer, and now its devastating attacks on its closest ally, Lebanon's Hezbollah. Iran’s military inferiority to Israel - and the US weapons systems it deploys - was underscored on Friday when the Israeli military launched unprecedented strikes on Iran destroying many of its prized S-300 air defence systems and reportedly, a missile plant. 

Trump himself said in an interview with Al Arabiya last week before the Israeli attack: “In its own way, its [Iran] probably in danger…maybe more so than they would have thought a month ago…I think it's in a lot of danger.”

Many in the US believe Trump would be more hawkish on Iran, given his previous term in office. He unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and ordered the assassination of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qassem Soleimani. His administration also pursued a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran. 

Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council official in the Trump administration who is now at the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security, told MEE that if Trump returns to the White House, he is likely to ramp up sanctions enforcement on Iran. 

“He is going to bankrupt Iran and reimplement oil sanctions that the Biden administration has refused to enforce,” he said. “And there will be secondary sanctions against nations who violate our sanctions, which means the Chinese who buy Iranian oil will have to make a tough decision.” 

Iran’s oil exports surged between 2021 and 2023 to levels unseen since the Trump administration re-imposed sanctions on them, according to the US Energy Information Agency. At the time, the Biden administration was in rigorous talks to revive the nuclear agreement. Just before the war in Gaza erupted, it had reached a deal to free jailed Americans in Tehran. They were released but the US said it had withheld $6bn of Iranian oil revenue meant to be released as part of the deal. 

'We have to make deal'

Trump insists that he wants to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran but on tougher terms. In September, he said, "We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible.” 

Asked about Trump’s comments, a former senior US official close to the Harris campaign told MEE that Harris is better placed to deliver a nuclear deal and blamed the Trump administration for Iran’s recent nuclear developments, “Maximum pressure failed.”

'Harris would engage Iran more promptly, but Trump has said he wants a nuclear deal'

- Robert Ford, Former US ambassador to Syria

Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal when Trump withdrew in 2018 but rapidly advanced its programme afterwards. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June that Iran was a few weeks away from producing enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon.

Phillip Gordon, Harris’s national security advisor, all but accused the Trump administration of trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In an article for the Washington Post, Gordon claimed that “the apparent logic” of Trump’s sanctions was to “squeeze Iran’s economy so hard that the Iranian people will rise up and overthrow the regime”.  

With Harris still considered an unknown quantity on foreign policy, Gordon’s book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, has become a framework for analysts and foreign governments to understand how Harris would approach the region. 

Robert Ford, the US’s former ambassador to Syria, told MEE that both Harris and Trump would likely try to engage in a nuclear deal. 

“Harris would engage Iran more promptly, but Trump has all but said he wants a nuclear deal. I imagine he will try to reach out to Iran through the Saudis or Indians,” Ford told MEE. 

A future Trump administration, however, is likely to be split between vehement Iran hawks like former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Senators Tom Cotton and Bill Haggerty, and on the other end, “America First” sceptics of Middle Eastern entanglements. The most coherent description of the latter’s view on Iran was spelt out by Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance in a podcast on Saturday. 

Vance pushed back on Israel’s escalation against Iran on the grounds that it was justified by the 7 October attacks. “The Israelis were like, ‘Okay, Hamas just attacked us. We’re gonna go really screw Hamas up…And the Iranians funded part of this, so we need to go to war with Iran…Our [US] interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.” 

He added: “I don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, and I think we should be… using all the influence we have to encourage them to not have a nuclear weapon…smart diplomacy really matters.”

The Islamic Republic was established in 1979 after the US-backed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown. Since then, Iran has been the US’s main rival in the region. 

Arash Azizi, an Iran expert, said Trump would have to overcome Israeli opposition for any US outreach to Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to rise up against the Islamic Republic. 

“Netanyahu’s interests will be very strong in a Trump White House,” said Azizi, author of the book, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions.

“Under ‘America First’, the Trump administration will want very good relations with a far-right Israel, which looks a lot like Viktor Orban’s Hungary but is stronger and richer. And Trump might say 'do whatever you want with the Palestinians, we don’t care'. That could complicate a deal with Iran,” he added. 

The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the nuclear deal wasn’t the first time Iran was jolted by the US. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iran’s elite Quds force actually worked with the US to overthrow the Taliban.

The cooperation was short-lived, and in his 2002 State of the Union address, George W Bush dubbed Iran as part of an “axis of evil”.

The US and Iran have been on a collision course since the address, with the US facing stiff opposition in Iraq from Iran-backed political forces and militias, as well as in Syria where it operates under the invitation of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. 

'Iranian deterrence collapsed'

Outmatched economically by the US and outgunned in the traditional military sense, the Islamic Republic built up a network of allies dubbed the "axis of resistance" to keep its fight with the US and Israel off its territory. 

Ford, the former US ambassador, said Iran’s strategy has collapsed. “The Iranians are exceptionally vulnerable right now. Their key deterrence element, especially Hezbollah, has failed.” 

'Iran frankly wants to play ball. It is desperate'

- Arash Azizi, Iran expert

More US and Arab officials believe Iran overreached when its proxies launched preemptive attacks on Israel and western assets after 7 October 2023, in what they said was in solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel’s tactical takedown of Hezbollah and killing of Hamas leaders have severely degraded that network, although it has demonstrated its ability to continue to frustrate the US in places like Yemen, where the Houthis continue to attack global ships. 

While the Biden administration lobbied Israel not to expand its war beyond Gaza, it has responded to Israel’s escalation by working to sideline Iran’s allies. In Gaza, the US wants to bring a UAE-backed Palestinian entity to government, and in Lebanon, it is lobbying behind the scenes to elect a pro-West president and bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces to curb Hezbollah, MEE has reported. 

But Iran has pushed back. It successfully headed off Israeli strikes on its energy facilities by threatening a reciprocal attack on Gulf oil installations. At the same time, it has preserved its rapprochement with Gulf powers amid regional tensions, even hosting joint military drills with Saudi Arabia. 

But Iran sits at a strategic crossroads. Some western officials worry that having faced military setbacks with its proxies, Iran will feel it has no choice but to build a nuclear weapon.

Rasoul Sanaei-Rad, a senior advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in October that Iran was weighing changing its position on obtaining one. 

But Israel’s strikes on Friday underscored how vulnerable Iran is to US-made arms like F-35 warplanes, which Israel deployed without irking Arab Gulf states.

The Institute for the Study of War said Israel appeared to have successfully destroyed three of Iran’s S-300 air defence systems. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack “creates a big disadvantage for the enemy when we want to attack later”.

In addition to its military setbacks, Iran’s economy has been battered by US sanctions, and the regime itself is arguably in a period of more uncertainty than in the US where it is facing the upcoming presidential election. Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei, is 85 and frail. A potential successor could be his son, Mojtaba, aged 55. But passing down the leadership through the Khamenei family could also spark complaints about nepotism and corruption when Iran has already faced popular protests.

The convergence of Iran’s weaknesses and a US desire to disengage from conflicts in the Middle East could create a window of opportunity for whoever succeeds Biden at the White House. 

“Both Harris and Trump ultimately have to engage Iran. They have no other option and Iran frankly wants to play ball,” Azizi said. “It is desperate.”