Iranian leaders have tended to prefer Republican U.S. presidents who have historically sought transactional deals, delivered on arms sales, and refrained from punishing human rights abuses in the region

By  John Limbert

The Stimson Center

When Elon Musk was reported to have met Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani last month, one can safely assume that the tech billionaire and top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump was not trying to sell Teslas to the Islamic Republic’s UN Mission.  However, the meeting itself should have come as no surprise. There is a long history of Iran’s rulers – whether monarch or theocrat – preferring to deal with American Republicans. 

Historically, Democratic presidents, such as John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, have been more prone to raise human rights concerns with Iranian leaders than Republicans, with the exception of George W. Bush and his “freedom” agenda of promoting democracy in the Middle East.

The late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi owed his throne to a Republican president.  In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower backed a coup against the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had presided over the Iranian nationalization of Britain’s Anglo-Persian oil company. Eisenhower’s successor, Republican Richard Nixon, and the Shah enjoyed excellent relations; the American president anointed the Shah as one of two gendarmes of the Persian Gulf, along with Saudi Arabia, and endorsed his buying spree of American military equipment in the 1970s even as popular opposition to the Shah’s autocratic rule mounted.

After the monarchy collapsed in 1979, the Shah – to the end of his life – blamed Democrat Carter for his fall. That Carter orchestrated Iran’s Islamic Revolution is still an article of faith among many diaspora Iranians, who are loathe to blame to themselves or the monarchy for the 1979 collapse.

Carter’s emphasis on human rights backfired in Iran, as the new rulers helped ensure that Carter was a one-term president. Holding 52 American diplomats – including this author – hostage for 444 days, the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was swayed by emissaries for Carter’s rival Ronald Reagan to keep the hostages past election day in 1980.

The story of the “October Surprise” was rumored for decades, detailed in books and articles by scholar Gary Sick, and journalists Robert Perry and Craig Unger, and confirmed in 2023 by New York Times writer Peter Baker, who interviewed one of Reagan’s messengers, Texas politician Ben Barnes. Iranians were offered a chance to buy badly needed weapons and spare parts for their American-equipped military if they would retain their American prisoners beyond the November election, thus helping Reagan’s chances. There were also promises of more clandestine arms deliveries under a future Republican administration, weapons Iran needed to fend off an Iraqi invasion.    

The Iranians could probably have had a similar deal from the Carter administration if they had been willing to release the hostages before the U.S. election. Although Carter had put an embargo on American weapons shipments to Iran, he was willing, in return for the hostages’ release, to send military supplies under the pretext of “returning frozen Iranian assets” according to Sick.

So, in the fall of 1980, the Iranians – like Americans – had a choice between the two parties.  Why did they choose Reagan and the Republicans? For one thing, the Republicans had already made a down payment on their promised arms deliveries. In late October, they completed a clandestine delivery of military spare parts, including retreaded tires for Iranian F-4s, in a complex transaction involving France, Israel, and an uncleared Iranian aircraft flying over Europe and Turkey, according to Unger’s book, Den of Spies. Second, Khomeini had a visceral dislike of Carter because of his prior effusive praise for the Shah and because having the U.S. as an enemy helped the Ayatollah mobilize his extremist supporters against domestic rivals. Thus, the Republicans, in supporting Khomeini’s desire to humiliate the leader of the “Great Satan,” were pushing on an open door. They were offering Khomeini the chance to claim that he and his revolution had brought down an American president – an offer the Democrats could not match.

Ironically, at the time of the clandestine October arms transfer, the Carter administration and Iran had reached the basics of an agreement for ending the crisis. In September 1980, then Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher met Khomeini’s representative Sadeq Tabataba’i in Bonn, and the two agreed on conditions for a deal. It remained only for the lawyers and bankers to work out the details, but that could have been accomplished before November. Instead, the Iranians cast their vote for Reagan, and the hostages were not freed until Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981.

During the Reagan administration, the clandestine supply of American weapons to Iran continued, leading to the scandal known as “Iran-Contra.” Revelations that the U.S. had provided weapons to Iran and used the proceeds to finance an anti-Communist militia in Nicaragua nearly cost Reagan his presidency. Iran did get some American weapons, although they were overcharged and did not receive what they had been led to expect. The Americans got a few hostages in Lebanon freed but more were taken by an Iran-backed group. The illusive “moderates” that Reagan hoped to cultivate in Iran turned out to be non-existent.

So, what are Musk (and Trump) up to now?

The president-elect has made clear that he would like some kind of “deal” with the Islamic Republic to replace the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the nuclear agreement Trump withdrew from unilaterally in 2018. In 2019, Trump endorsed a meeting in New York by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) with then-Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a top negotiator of the JCPOA.  Paul invited Zarif to the White House but Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, nixed the idea. Trump tried again, unsuccessfully, to meet Zarif in France, where President Emmanuel Macron had invited the veteran Iranian diplomat.

On the Iranian side, Musk currently serves as a surrogate for the American political party that Tehran has always preferred as a negotiating partner. The Trump team has sweetened the notion of a deal by ruling out “regime change” even as it has threatened to toughen sanctions on Iran. Most likely, the Iranians will listen to what Republicans have to offer just as they listened to them 44 years ago.   Why should they not?

John Limbert is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, novelist, and academic.  He was among the last American diplomats to serve in Iran and spent 14 months as a prisoner of those occupying the U.S. embassy in from 1979 to 1981.