Even the Iranian Election Is About Trump
A specter is haunting Iran’s presidential election—the specter of Donald Trump’s return to office. Although Trump has been out of the White House for more than three years, he seems to come up more than Joe Biden, and more than other foreign politicians, in debates among the six candidates in the lead-up to Iran’s election on June 28.
To understand why, consider the recent history of Iran-U.S. relations—specifically, the nuclear deal negotiated between the Obama administration and that of Iran’s centrist former president Hassan Rouhani.
In 2013, Rouhani campaigned on the promise of making a deal with the West: Iran would limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. That agreement was finally reached in 2015, after months of grueling negotiations, led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on one side and Rouhani’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, on the other. Trump vocally opposed the deal, and when he became president, he it up in 2018. He adopted on Iran instead, characterized by intensified sanctions and in 2020 with the assassination of Iran’s best-known general, Qassem Soleimani.
