Even Iran is attempting to play nice with Donald Trump

Is Iran so scared of Donald Trump that it’s starting (or pretending) to play nice?

That’s the question on the minds of U.S. national security officials and analysts as Tehran braces for another four years of Trump.

Iranian officials are already offering up some purported olive branches and backchannels to the Trump transition team. For starters, billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk reportedly met with Iran’s U.N. ambassador on Monday in a meeting Iranian officials characterized to The New York Times as a conversation on how to defuse tensions between the two countries. (A representative for Musk did not respond to a request for comment on the reported meeting, and Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur.”)

And cease-fire talks between Israel and Iran’s top proxy group in Lebanon — Hezbollah — are ramping up following months of fighting. U.S. officials and regional analysts have said that Hezbollah isn’t going to agree to any cease-fire without a green light from Tehran.

Then there’s the fact that Iran invited the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog to visit for the first time since May. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi traveled to Iran this week after fighting for months to get Tehran to lift its de facto ban on IAEA inspectors visiting the country’s nuclear sites.

“It’s clear they’re scared,” said one former Trump administration official who worked on Middle East issues. The person was granted anonymity to discuss the incoming administration’s thinking candidly.

So will Iran’s overtures make a difference?

On the one hand, most former Trump officials and Middle East analysts expect Trump to revive his first term policies of unbridled support for Israel and a “maximum pressure” strategy on Iran to cripple its economy and isolate it diplomatically as it pursues its nuclear program.

On the other hand, Trump is (in)famously transactional, and while he has picked Iran hawks for some top administration posts, he’s also tapped others who argue for restraint. That could give Iran a bit of room to lobby for the U.S. at least easing diplomatic pressure. That’s if Trump’s team views the outreach as genuine, that is.

“It’s likely that anything Tehran could use to dampen or slow maximum pressure can and will be used, from diplomacy to denial and deception,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an analyst at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

The Iranian mission at the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trita Parsi, co-founder of the noninterventionist Quincy Institute think tank in Washington, told NatSec Daily that Iran may see this moment as a fresh opportunity to establish a relationship with Trump for future negotiations. Tehran rebuffed meeting requests from Trump allies back in 2016 when Trump won the first time, and Parsi says that was detrimental for Iran’s goal of reaching a deal with Trump.

“The Iranians have concluded, perhaps not openly, that they made a mistake during the Trump years,” Parsi said. “They rejected him for a variety of reasons. They didn’t know how to handle it, but it left Trump in a situation in which it became much easier for the Israelis, for the neocons, for the hawks, to convince Trump the only way to get a deal with the Iranians is that you have to sanction them to death.”

Unlike the first Trump term, however, there’s a war waging in the Middle East between Israel and Iran’s top proxies in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel’s offensives against both militant groups have devastated their military ranks — alongside creating major humanitarian crises — weakening Iran’s hand in the region militarily. It’s unclear whether this would push Iran to bow more to U.S. pressure in the Trump era, or lash out even further.

Additionally, Trump has signaled he wouldn’t try to rein in Israel on its tit-for-tat retaliatory strikes on Iran like President Joe Biden has.

Then there’s the fact that Iranian agents have been actively seeking to assassinate former Trump officials following Trump’s decision to kill top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 airstrike. This, to say the least, will hamper Iran’s efforts to get off to any semblance of strong start with the Trump team.

“They can try all they want,” said the former Trump official. “We tend to remember things like you trying to kill us though, no matter how much you pretend to play nice in diplomatic circles.”