DORSA JABBARI: November 2016--
Iranians woke up to the news of a new President-elect
in Washington not paying much attention to how
he could change their lives.
As soon as the US president took office,
his first order of business was the Muslim ban, which meant
no more visas for Iranians.
Six months earlier, it was a much different story
as Iran signed a major nuclear agreement
with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council--
China, France, Russia, the US, and the United Kingdom,
plus Germany.
Iran's relationship with Western powers, including the US,
had never been better.
There was hope that the nuclear deal would allow Iran
to rejoin the world economy.
Then in May of 2018, Donald Trump
announced the United States was leaving the nuclear agreement
because, in his words, "it's not a good deal
at all for Americans."
The Iranian leadership quickly condemned the withdrawal
and urged the remaining signatories
to abide by their commitments to the deal.
And in November two years ago, the United States
imposed the most stringent sanctions on Iran.
No one was allowed to buy Iranian oil
except eight countries which were heavily
reliant on it, including Iraq.
More sanctions followed in what the United States called
its maximum pressure campaign in an attempt
to bring Iran back to the negotiating
table for a new nuclear deal, which
would include the Iranian ballistic missile program.
But the commander in chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
said that the time for negotiating was over.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
INTERPRETER: The reason why I say
we will not negotiate with the US is that it is pointless.
Of course they will benefit from negotiations.
They say that we should forsake our defense capabilities and
a regional and national power.
Well, this is not possible.
An honorable person who is interested in preserving
the country's interests will not give in to these demands.
This is the reason why I am against negotiating
with the US.
DORSA JABBARI: As tensions reached an all-time high,
on January the 3rd, President Trump
ordered a drone strike which killed Major General
Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Iranian leaders all vowed revenge
and described the killing of the top military commander
as an act of war.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard launched over a dozen missiles
at a US base in Iraq, but no American personnel
were killed in the attack.
As the US elections approached, Iranian state TV
broadcast the presidential debates though officially
Iran's position is one of ambivalence towards whomever
occupies the White House next.
HAMED MOUSAVI: I think if Donald Trump is re-elected,
we are pretty much going to have the same as what
we had in the past four years.
And that is going to be a lot of hostility and contention
between the two countries and perhaps
even a military confrontation.
If Joe Biden wins the election, I
think the situation is going to be more complicated, more
unpredictable, in the sense that there
is the potential of reaching a deal between the two countries.
DORSA JABBARI: For ordinary Iranians,
it is the economy and the value of the real that matters most,
which is at an all-time low while inflation
is at an all-time high--
all byproducts of what the government
calls economic terrorism.
This is the former US embassy in Tehran.
And it's been 41 years since students stormed these walls
and took 52 US diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days.
They were demanding the US government
return the Shah of Iran who was there
receiving cancer treatment.
Now it's been over four decades.
And those feelings of hostilities and lack of trust
are still visible on these walls as these new murals show just
how little has changed between Iran and the United States
since the revolution of 1979.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera, Tehran.