US President-elect Donald Trump told protesters in the US this week not to be afraid of his presidency and that time would decrease the separation between them when speaking to CBS News on 13 November in his first interview as the new US president. He was talking to the American people, but the Iranian public also has reason to be concerned at a Trump presidency. While the world is worried about matters such as the economy and political changes in the US, Iranians are less worried about these things as their country has not had diplomatic relations with the US over the past 38 years. What makes the Iranians more worried is the future of the Iran nuclear deal which Trump in his presidential election campaign frequently threatened to rip up if elected president. As president-elect, and taking up a new tone of reconciliation, Trump talked of his priorities in office. These would include building a wall or fence between the US and Mexico, deporting illegal immigrants and making changes to the Affordable Care Act, the so-called Obamacare. He did not mention the Iran nuclear agreement. Trump told Lesley Stahl of CBS that the situation in the Middle East was his priority along with fighting the terrorist group Islamic State (IS). He did not say what kind of action he might take, but based on his previous comments collaboration with Russia and the Syrian regime may be what he has in mind. This policy of working with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad will be welcome to Iran's political leaders and has been reported in speeches and print outlets. History has showed that Iran has often got on better with Republican US presidents than with Democrat ones. Current President Barack Obama, soft spoken and committed to a diplomatic path, pressed Iran hard. US sanctions on the Iranian economy, banking and oil industry paralysed much of the country during Obama's presidency and the regime almost faced an internal explosion because of economic hardship. The election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013 probably saved the regime, and he was forced to resolve the nuclear problem with the West and improve the country's economy. Rouhani had little choice other than to sit at the negotiation table with the world powers and dismantle a big portion of the country's nuclear programme. Rouhani and his team entered two years of intense talks with the West led by the United States and reached agreement in the summer of 2015. Almost a year later, the nuclear deal has been implemented and the sanctions lifted, but the economy has not improved as much as many Iranians wished for. Smart sanctions cannot be lifted overnight, and despite the efforts made by Obama and his EU allies to push banks and businesses to cooperate with Iran this goal has not yet been fully achieved. “Many of the major banks have not had any cooperation with Iran yet, and this is clearly visible,” chief of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi told the Tasnim news agency on 14 November. It will take years before the effects of the sanctions ease, these being more effective in some ways even than a bombing campaign on the country. No one in Iran wants to see a return to these sanctions, even if improvements are slow. The soft diplomacy of President Obama turned out to be more effective and more damaging than a direct confrontation. Despite the complaints of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Rouhani expressing disappointment that the Americans have not yet delivered on their promises and the sanctions haven't been fully lifted yet, there is still the knowledge that without the nuclear deal the regime would have had difficulty surviving. When Trump told CNN earlier that he may be interested in renegotiating parts of the deal, the leadership in Iran was disturbed. “Iran would not accept any alteration to the nuclear deal. This is Iran's policy and there will be no setbacks,” Sadegh Kharrazi, a senior diplomat and relative of Khamenei, told the UK newspaper the Financial Times.
