The Iranian mission to the United Nations declined to comment on a New York Times report that Trump ally Elon Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N.

By Yeganeh Torbati

The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is fueling a fierce debate inside Iran, where experts and officials are openly deliberating whether to negotiate with his administration — or take a more hostile stance including possible steps toward a nuclear bomb.

In the days since the election, some Iranian officials have cautiously signaled that they are willing to talk, even as more hard-line factions say they are opposed to negotiations. “The communication channels between us and the Americans still exist,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting this week, news agencies reported.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations declined Thursday to comment on a New York Times report that Elon Musk, a Trump ally, met with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in New York on Monday. The report stated that the meeting was at Musk’s request and focused on how to defuse tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and it was unclear if Trump authorized the meeting. Federal prosecutors on Friday announced charges against three men in an alleged Iranian plot to kill people in the United States, including an apparent effort to assassinate Trump while he campaigned for a second term.

But in recent remarks, Trump has said that he “would like to see Iran be very successful.”

“The only thing is, they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said in an interview on the right-wing PBD Podcast last month.

In his first term, Trump pursued a strategy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, withdrawing from the agreement that restricted its nuclear energy program, reimposing sanctions and ordering the strike that killed prominent Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Trump said that the nuclear deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration, didn’t cover the full range of threats from Iran, including ballistic missiles and support for allied militias in the region.

But for Iranian leaders, Trump’s unpredictable policies, as well as his desire to be viewed as a master dealmaker, are indications that diplomacy might still be possible. Taking a more aggressive posture also risks more conflict with Israel, analysts said, now that the two foes are waging their longtime shadow war in the open.

“Right now, there’s caution in Iran,” said Diako Hosseini, a foreign-policy analyst based in Tehran. He said the leadership doesn’t want “a hostile relationship with Trump at this stage,” but nor does it wish to “immediately welcome” his return to office.

“On Iran’s side, the windows for communication and negotiation with Trump’s government are not completely closed,” he added.

One key factor is that Iran is weaker today than it was eight years ago when Trump first became president, experts said. “In 2017, you could say when Trump came in, Iran was riding pretty high,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

Tehran had recently signed the nuclear accord that lifted most international sanctions, allowing it to sell oil on the global market. European firms, including automotive, aircraft and pharmaceutical giants, prepared to invest.

Now, its economy is struggling, its leaders aging, and its “forward defense strategy is in tatters,” Vatanka said. In recent months, Israel has destroyed or degraded key pillars of Iran’s regional deterrence doctrine, waging war against Iranian-backed militants in Gaza and Lebanon and targeting weapons systems and missile facilities inside the country.

Even if Iran decides to keep the same strategy, including rebuilding air defenses and maintaining its militia network, that “requires money they don’t have,” Vatanka said.

Iran’s vulnerability could be seen by Trump and his more hawkish aides as an opportunity to squeeze it further. The United States “is ready for a return to President Trump’s MAXIMUM PRESSURE campaign against Iran,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), Trump’s pick for U.N. ambassador, wrote on X after the election.

In an interview last week with CNN, Brian Hook, Trump’s former envoy for Iran, said that the president-elect “understands that the chief driver of instability in today’s Middle East is the Iranian regime.”

Still, Hook said, Trump “has no interest in regime change.”

“We can’t get totally involved,” Trump said on the PBD Podcast, when Iranian American host Patrick Bet-David asked whether he wanted to see a new government in Tehran. “Let’s face it, Patrick,” he said. “We can’t run [it] ourselves.”

But most political factions in Iran agree that Tehran won’t negotiate under pressure, said Mostafa Najafi, a regional security expert affiliated with Tarbiat Modares University.

“If he returns to that same policy of maximum pressure,” he said of Trump, “have no doubt that Iran won’t choose the negotiating table.”

Hard-line politicians have in recent weeks urged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to revise the nation’s defense doctrine to allow the production of nuclear weapons. Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of foreign policy and national security, issued a religious decree prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons in 2003.

But tensions have soared between Israel and Iran, with both countries launching attacks on the other’s territory. In the latest round on Oct. 26, Israel carried out strikes on Iranian military installations, killing four soldiers.

“If Iran faces an existential threat, we will reconsider our nuclear policy. This is still on the table,” former foreign minister and Khamenei adviser Kamal Kharrazi said in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen channel this month. “We currently possess the technical capability to produce nuclear weapons and have no issues in this regard.”

In the wake of Trump’s victory, hard-line lawmaker Ahmad Naderi said Iran should quickly conduct “a nuclear test” and announce it officially so that it can establish “maximum deterrence.”

His remarks came ahead of a high-profile visit to Tehran on Thursday by Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

“The space for negotiation and diplomacy is not getting bigger, it is getting smaller,” Grossi said at a news conference in the capital, citing regional and international tensions. His agency has struggled to regain access to Iran’s nuclear facilities after Trump withdrew from the agreement and Tehran abandoned all limits on the program.

Najafi, the regional security expert, said that Iran’s recent challenges had already led many in Iran to conclude that the country was already “paying the price” of outside pressure. “So we must move towards a change in strategies related to the nuclear project,” he said, describing their thinking.

Hosseini, the foreign policy analyst, said lawmakers, senior security officials and people close to the government may believe that “right now is not the time for negotiation because the Americans think we’re in a point of weakness.”

But a more confrontational approach carries severe risks for Tehran, which in recent years has seen waves of domestic unrest, spurred both by economic concerns and general dissatisfaction with decades of corruption, mismanagement and political repression.

At the same time, Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful ally in the region, has suffered staggering losses in its conflict with Israel. And Israeli strikes in Iran last month knocked out its air defenses, leaving it exposed to another attack.

“That’s a new dynamic,” said David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit focused on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. “A year ago, six months ago … we didn’t know what Israel could really do.”

Tehran will need to balance its approach to both the United States and Israel, which is a key U.S. ally but has so far attacked Iran on its own. Trump has suggested he would put less pressure on Israel to rein in its military operations in the Middle East.

And “while Trump’s victory has given some pause to both sides regarding their next move, Israel and Iran will likely try to establish an advantage on the ground before his presidency,” three Middle East experts at the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote on Wednesday. “In doing so, they risk overreaching and plunging the region further into war.”

Khamenei, who was close to Soleimani, the slain Iranian general, also remains “scarred” by his death, said Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer on Iranian politics at Israel’s Reichman University.

That enmity is coloring the supreme leader’s approach to Trump, he said. Khamenei is “struggling between two different extremes, on the one hand wanting to settle scores with Trump by taking a very, very aggressive policy towards him,” Javedanfar said. “But on the other hand, he’s very scared also.”

Shayna Jacobs in New York and John Hudson contributed to this report.