Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Iran since the presidency of Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021), the ruling elite has debated whether a grand bargain with the United States is possible.
Those who believe that the US is not an honest or reliable partner for any deal-making are taking some delight in Trump’s humiliating treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday.
Jam-e Jam (The Cup of Jamshid), a state organ, simply said on its front page, that Trump’s tirade against Zelenskyy and the expulsion of the foreign head of state from the White House in the full view of the media illustrated the undependability of Washington and the West.
Fars News used the incident to praise the rejection of negotiations with the U.S. by Iran’s clerical Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said Zelenskyy’s humiliation was “a stamp of approval for the wise stances of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution. This event once again emphasizes the correctness of his views on distrust of America and the dangers of negotiating with this country.” As BBC Monitoring notes in commenting on this article, Khamenei ruled out talks with the U.S. in February when Trump reimposed maximum pressure sanctions.
Fars wrote that the scandalous treatment of the Ukrainian president demonstrates that “negotiating with America is not only unwise, but also inherently ‘dishonorable.'” This assertion seems aimed at President Masoud Pezeshkian and the pragmatists in the Iranian elite, some of whom favor talks with Washington.
Fars recalls that in 1994 the U.S. and other countries forced Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees — guarantees that Trump just proved were worthless.
This remark almost certainly relates to Iran’s 2015 decision to severely curtail its civilian nuclear enrichment program, which the hardliners believe was an error — and it is hard to argue with them since they never received the promised sanctions relief that was the proffered quid pro quo. It is not clear if the Fars writers are going further and saying that both Ukraine and Iran would be better off with nukes. Leader Khamenei forbids nuclear weapons as incompatible with the Islamic laws of war, which prohibit the killing of non-combatants, but some Iranian officers, engineers and scientists wish he would permit a nuclear weapons program.
“The Ayatollah begs to Differ,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2025
The hard line Student News Network ran a headline, “Humiliation and Betrayal: A story of the mirage of depending on America in the Trump-Zelenskyy Meeting.” Zelenskyy, the article says, came with hope and did not expect “humiliation, deception, and blatant betrayal by his American host.” The SSN quoted Trump’s badgering of Zelenskyy, “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.” They observed, “This statement made it clear that Washington had never truly intended to support Ukraine but rather saw it merely as a tool for its own interests.”
The analysis is flawed because it doesn’t take account of the change of administrations between Biden and Trump, but as applied to Trump it is hard to argue with.
SNN adds, “For Ukraine, this meeting was a bitter object lesson. A country that had for years delighted in U.S. support was discarded like an over-roasted nut at a critical moment. What happened at the White House was just one example of Washington’s many betrayals of its allies. History has shown that America has always used other nations for its own interests, only to abandon them when no longer needed.”
It listed Iraq and Libya, among others, as countries the U.S. used and then tossed aside.
Former President Hassan Rouhani had taken the bull by the horns and conducted negotiations with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, which yielded the 2015 Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action. In return for a removal of US and UN sanctions, Iran mothballed 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program and accepted restrictions that made it all but impossible for it to weaponize the program in any time relevant time frame.
In May 2018 Trump shredded the treaty and slapped the most severe economic blockade on Iran that had ever been imposed by one country on another in peacetime. Iran received no sanctions relief because the Republican Party refused to allow Obama to lift US sanctions, which in turn so menaced European firms that they were scared off from doing business with Iran. And then Trump actually ratcheted up the sanctions even though Iran had until that point faithfully observed the provisions of the JCPOA.
So you can imagine Iranian Schadenfreude at Zelenskyy’s treatment, since they were subjected to the same Washington roller coaster and ultimate betrayal.
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