October 30, 2020
Iranian officials have been saying for weeks that the Islamic Republic doesn’t care who wins the US presidential election—but few believe that and the Iranian public tells a pollster that the winner will impact Iran “a lot.”
Iranian officials have commented repeatedly in speeches that Iran doesn’t care about the outcome of the US elections because all American politicians hate Iran and all will seek to hurt Iran. That has been said so often by so many officials that it appears the regime has told officials to make that assertion.
But the public doesn’t agree.
The state-owned polling center ISPA said this month that 55 percent of Iranians believe the outcome of the election will affect Iran “a lot.” Over half expected Trump to win, while a fifth said Biden. ISPA said it surveyed over 1,600 people by telephone, and did not provide a margin of error.
President Trump is telling supporters the election outcome will make a difference. He has been saying for months that Iran has been putting off entering talks until after the election in hopes that Joe Biden will win.
“The first call I get when we win will be from the head of Iran—’let’s make a deal.’ Their economy is crashing,” Trump told a campaign rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, October 26. “They will call and I want them to do well, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Biden has had little to say about Iran during the campaign. In answering a question some weeks ago, he said he would rejoin the deal if Iran first came back into compliance with it. But Biden’s campaign website doesn’t say that. It says he would use “hard-nosed diplomacy and support from our allies to strengthen and extend it.”
Pointedly, that does not say he will rejoin the nuclear deal. It sounds like he is adopting a criticism of the accord made by many Republicans and Europeans that its narrow focus on the nuclear program ignores Iran’s missile program, its support for armed groups in several Arab countries and its human rights violations. The comment that he wants to “strengthen” the deal sounds like he would like to cover those other topics.