Al-Monitor:

If the US administration’s goal is to weaken Iran’s reform movement, it deserves a round of applause. Since coming to power, President Donald Trump has taken consecutive steps to distance Washington and Tehran — and, in the process, to increasingly damage Iranian moderates and Reformists.

All the while, Iranian hard-liners couldn’t be more content. They are now certain of victory in the upcoming 2020 parliamentary polls and 2021 presidential vote as people are disappointed with those in Iran who have for years been calling for negotiations with the United States. But Iranian moderates and Reformists are not the only losers in the current setting. The United States is also losing its popularity and credibility among ordinary Iranians. Indeed, according to a survey conducted by the University of Maryland in 2018, 80% of Iranians expressed an unfavorable opinion of America — a development that would be hard to imagine until recent years. 

As such, Trump has achieved what Iranian hard-liners could not: to persuade Iranians that the Reformist approach of engaging with the West does not pay off. Indeed, one common sentiment in Iran now is that the country would probably be better off without the 2015 nuclear deal, which is the legacy of moderate President Hassan Rouhani. Much of this has to do with how the living conditions of ordinary Iranians have not only failed to improve, but rather worsened since the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The only exception to the latter was the first few months after the implementation of the accord in January 2016.

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