Iran’s government seems to be welcoming some recent decisions by the United States – even though they came from a President Iranian operatives have allegedly been plotting to assassinate.
Donald Trump’s moves to freeze spending on foreign aid and overhaul, and perhaps even end, the US Agency for International Development (USAid), have been lauded in Iranian state media.
Reports say these decisions will halt funding for opponents of the country’s Shia theocracy – pro-democracy activists and others supported through programmes as part of US government’s efforts to help democracy worldwide.
At the same time, Iranian officials appear to be signalling that they are waiting for a message from Mr Trump on whether he wants to negotiate over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
At stake are potentially billions of dollars withheld from Iran through crushing sanctions and the future of a programme on the precipice of enriching weapons-grade uranium.
Even when signing an executive order to reimpose “maximum pressure on Iran” on Tuesday, Mr Trump suggested he wanted to deal with Tehran.
Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians worry what all this could mean for them. On Wednesday, Iran’s currency, the rial, plunged to a record low of 850,000 to one dollar after Mr Trump’s order, showing the ongoing economic volatility they face. A decade ago, it stood at 32,000 rials to the dollar.
Maryam Faraji, a 27-year-old waitress in a coffee shop in northern Tehran, said: “It encourages hard-liners inside Iran to continue repressions because they feel the US would have less capability in supporting Iranian people who seek freedom.”
The state-run IRNA news agency said that “cutting the budget of foreign-based opposition” could “affect the sphere of relations” between Tehran and Washington.
Newspapers, like the conservative Hamshhari daily, described Iran’s opposition as
“counter-revolutionaries” who had been “celebrating” Mr Trump’s election as heralding the “last days of life of the Islamic Republic”.
They then “suddenly faced the surprise of cut funding from their employer”, the newspaper commented.
Even the reformist newspaper Hammihan compared the move to a “cold shower” for opponents of Iran’s theocracy abroad, an idea also expressed by the Foreign Ministry.
“Those financial resources are not charity donations,” Esmail Bagahei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said during a briefing with reporters on Monday. “They are wages paid in exchange for services.
“This is a clear sign of America’s interventionist policy particularly during the Biden administration, which tried to pressure Iran and meddle in its domestic affairs through financial aid.”
It remains unclear how funding for Iranian activists and opposition figures would be affected by the USAid decision.
The lion’s share of money for civil society in Iran has come through the US State Department’s Near East Regional Democracy fund, known by the acronym NERD, which grew as an American response to the Green Movement protests in 2009.
In 2024, the Biden administration requested 65 million dollars (£52 million) for NERD after more than 600 million dollars (£482 million) had been appropriated by US Congress for the fund, according to the Congressional Research Service.
That money and other funding had gone in the past towards training journalists and activists on how to report on human rights abuses, funding access to the internet amid government shutdowns, and other issues.
The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment over the NERD funding and its future.
