Elon Musk seeks to ease tensions with Iran
Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Donald Trump's new administration, is beginning to serve as an advisor and important collaborator to the new US president.
In a recent remarkable political move, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX and an important figure in Donald Trump's new political network had a private meeting with Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations (UN), to defuse tensions with the Islamic Republic, now at the centre of many of the tensions in the Middle East.
The meeting took place in a secret location and talks were held on ‘defusing the tension’ through the meeting with the Iranian ambassador, which has been described as ‘positive’.
The New York Times reported on contacts between the US and Iran to try to ‘defuse the tension between Tehran and Washington’. A scenario that would help to partially pacify the Middle East region, plagued by major conflicts such as the Gaza war and the conflict on the border between Israel and Lebanon, military clashes in which the Israeli army fights with the extremist Palestinian militia Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah in the wars unleashed in response to the bloody attacks that Israel suffered on its own territory on 7 October 2023, carried out by Hamas and which left around 1,200 dead and some 250 people kidnapped.
The newspaper quoted two unnamed Iranian sources as saying that the meeting between the world's richest man and Ambassador Amir Saeid Irani was ‘positive’, noting that the two men met for more than an hour at a secret location.
The meeting was not officially confirmed, neither by Donald Trump's team nor by the Ayatollahs' regime, which raised doubts about the meeting.
However, reports of these contacts have spread and may indicate that the new Trump administration intends to have a fluid dialogue with Iran, a country considered by several analysts to be destabilising the Middle East region by influencing various Shiite groups that meddle in the internal affairs of other states and thus favour the interests of the Islamic Republic, the great standard-bearer of the Shiite branch of Islam in the region.
Nuclear pact
A very relevant issue to bear in mind regarding the US-Iran relationship is that of the nuclear deal that limited Iran's atomic programme.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear pact was an agreement sealed in 2015 by various powers such as the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Russia and the European Union with the Islamic Republic of Iran aimed at controlling the Persian atomic programme and ensuring that it was only for civilian use, avoiding its use for weapons purposes.
In 2018, Donald Trump, during his first term in the White House, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal signed during the era of his predecessor Barack Obama and sought to pursue a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Tehran, including forcing allied countries not to buy Iranian oil.
But now Donald Trump has reversed his stance and is trying to pursue a more conciliatory policy towards the ayatollahs' regime. This is despite the fact that the new US president has offered clear support to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a time of serious political conflict in the Middle East over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Iranian interference that harms Israeli interests.