How Iranians are reacting Trump’s election and what it could mean for their lives

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• Geoff Bennett:

  With president-elect Trump's team coming into focus, one priority will be confronting and increasing pressure on Iran. So how does that look and feel to ordinary Iranians?

  Special correspondent Reza Sayah reports from Tehran.

• Reza Sayah:

  At the Nazari Street bakery in the capital, Tehran, Iran's famous barbari flatbread is always the right choice. But for bakery owner Taher Ali Nazari, America's election of Donald Trump was a choice between two evils.

• Taher Nazari, Bakery Owner (through interpreter):

  The people are smarter than that talks about whether Trump won or didn't win, whether the Democrats won or the Republicans. Like they say, they are both as bad as each other.

• Reza Sayah:

  At Friday prayers, a weekly gathering of Iran's ultraconservatives, many said Trump's victory over Harris changes nothing in U.S. policy.

• Ali Reza Abdullahi, Petrochemical Worker (through interpreter):

  In America and in their elections, it doesn't matter if it is Democrats or Republicans. Nothing will change.

• Azam Khajani, Koran Teacher (through interpreter):

  There are two they are sides of the same coin. Their objectives are the same. They either want to sanction us or start a war.

• Reza Sayah:

  While many here downplayed the victory, others said, oh, no, not again.

  Mehrab Kaboli , Engineer (through interpreter): We laughed. It was the laugh that comes with the loss of hope.

• Reza Sayah:

  Mehrab Kaboli is CEO of a Tehran-based engineering firm. Kaboli says he was pulling for Kamala Harris in what he viewed as the Democrats' softer stance on Iran.

• Mehrab Kaboli (through interpreter):

  Right now, we expect things to get worse because it was during Trump's last term when Iran couldn't sell oil. During Biden's presidency, the restrictions were somewhat eased. That made circumstances more tolerable.

• Reza Sayah:

  Last month, a U.S. government report showed Iran's oil sales, its leading export, topped $50 billion in 2023, an almost threefold increase from Trump's last year in office.

  In his first term, Mr. Trump made it clear he was cracking down on Iran oil exports. And he did. It was a key objective in his so-called maximum pressure campaign, a strategy designed to use aggressive sanctions to rein in Iran's nuclear program and support for its regional proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.

  Critics say the strategy failed. Iran continued to fund its proxies and expanded its nuclear program after Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. Many Iranians say it is the people who felt the pain through record high inflation and cost of living.

• Mehrab Kaboli (through interpreter):

  There's no certainty when you make economic decisions and, more importantly, sanctions have directly impacted our work.

• Reza Sayah:

  Isn't Trump the candidate that makes Iranians worse off?

• Mohammad Marandi, Political Analyst:

  It doesn't make a difference.

• Reza Sayah:

  Tehran-based political analyst Mohammad Marandi says Iran has softened the impact of sanctions by strengthening economic ties with major powers like Russia and China.

• Mohammad Marandi:

  What the United States is doing right now, not just to Iran, but to Russia and to many countries across the world, is that they're creating an incentive for countries to move away from the United States. So we're in the process of doing that. So U.S. sanctions don't have the impact that they had before.

• Reza Sayah:

  But one day after the Trump victory, fears of a return to Trump's maximum-pressure campaign dropped the value of Iran's currency to an all-time low.

  At the Persia (ph) gym in Tehran, top trainer Soroush and his clients are bracing for Trump and more sanctions.

• Soroush, Trainer (through interpreter):

  Based on what we experienced during his first four years, he's going to increase pressure.

• ALI, Businessman (through interpreter):

  Nothing good will happen when it comes to our livelihood. Things will get worse.

• Reza Sayah:

  Behnaz Shafiei is Iran's first ever female professional road racer. When she's not weaving the hillsides of Northern Tehran on her sport bike, she's training other women to follow in her footsteps.

  Shafiei says Trump's win means more stress.

• Behnaz Shafiei, Professional Road Racer (through interpreter):

  We're stressed out about war, worried about new sanctions that we have no doubt will come, worried about the cost of living. For eight years, it's been like this, confusion, not knowing what to do, and now there's the added worry of war.

• Reza Sayah:

  That fear of war has intensified, with Iran's support for Hamas in the aftermath of its October 7 attack against Israel and direct missile exchanges with Tel Aviv.

  But Reyhaneh Tabatabaei has a glimmer of hope. Tabatabaei is a journalist who spent two years in jail for what Iranian authorities call propaganda against the regime. She says Trump's promise to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and his longstanding call for talks with Tehran could be a path to better relations.

  For that to happen, Tabatabaei says the Iranian government must show political will.

• Reyhaneh Tabatabaei, Journalist (through interpreter):

  I have to be hopeful that my government wants to do something. This decision has to be made within the Islamic Republic. The people of Iran want the right to have a life, whether it's Trump, Harris or anyone else. Any negotiations have to be with the objective of improving the lives of the people of Iran.

• Reza Sayah:

  For now, the people of Iran can only hope. Last week, the Justice Department reported on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.

  In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said the allegations were lies and demanded president-elect Trump to stop what Tehran calls the genocide in Gaza.

• Esmail Baghaei, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman (through interpreter):

  What the international community expects with new and previous governments is an end to the genocide, war crimes and the sowing of instability in Gaza, Lebanon and other parts of the region in Western Asia.

• Reza Sayah:

  Stark reminders that in Trump's second term in office, the 45-year conflict between Washington and Tehran is likely to continue.

  For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Reza Sayah in Tehran.

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