Iran welcomes Trump’s foreign aid cuts as both sides hint at nuclear negotiations

Iranian state media has lauded US President Donald Trump’s moves to freeze spending on foreign aid and overhaul, maybe even end, the US Agency for International Development.

According to reports, the decisions will halt funding for opponents of the country’s Shiite theocracy — pro-democracy activists and others supported through programs as part of US government’s efforts to help democracy worldwide.

At the same time, Iranian officials have signaled that they wish to enter into nuclear talks with the new US administration, in hopes of potentially easing sanctions that Trump recently vowed to strictly enforce.

Ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering “maximum economic pressure” on Iran as part of a larger campaign to “drive Iran’s oil exports down to zero.”

“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump added: “They’re too close.”

But even when signing the memo, Trump suggested he wanted to treat with Tehran.

Iranians who sympathize with pro-democracy elements expressed worry that Trump’s aid cuts stand to embolden the country’s religious hardliners.

“It encourages hardliners inside Iran to continue repressions because they feel the US would have less capability in supporting Iranian people who seek freedom,” said Maryam Faraji, a 27-year-old waitress in a coffee shop in northern Tehran.

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 “counterrevolutionaries” who had been “celebrating” 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 crowed.

Even the reformist newspaper Hammihan compared it 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 Baghaei, 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,” Baghaei added.

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 for NERD after over $600 million had been appropriated by Congress for the fund, according to the Congressional Research Service.

That money and other funding had gone in the past toward training journalists and activists on how to report on human rights abuses, funding access to the internet amid government shutdowns and other issues.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment over the NERD funding and its future. American officials for years have kept the awardees of NERD grants secret due to what they describe as the risk activists face from Iran, particularly after Iranian intelligence officers have allegedly been targeted in kidnapping or assassination plots, US prosecutors say.

Iran also noticed that the US avoided direct criticism of the Islamic Republic during a review by the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva last week.

Some in Iran’s government view this as a sign that Trump is willing to negotiate, something he repeatedly raised as a possibility in his election campaign.

Even Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, in a speech in September opened the door to talks with the US, saying there is “no harm” in engaging with the “enemy.”

More recently, he tempered that, warning that sinister plots could still be “concealed behind diplomatic smiles.”

“We must be careful about who we are dealing with, who we are negotiating with, and who we are speaking to,” Khamenei said last week.

While Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, acknowledged Iran hasn’t seen any “green light” yet for talks, its government is doing everything it can to signal it wants them.

The country’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who campaigned on outreach to the West, urged officials on Monday to listen to dissent from the Iranian people and avoid further crackdowns like those that followed the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.

“The enemies are hoping that by stirring up disputes within the country, they will throw people into the streets and then ride the wave of protests themselves,” Pezeshkian said.

As he signed the memo on Iran on Tuesday, Trump warned the country would be “obliterated” if he was assassinated by Tehran. But he still left the door open for talks.

“I’m going to sign it, but hopefully we’re not going to have to use it very much,” he said from the Oval Office. “We will see whether or not we can arrange or work out a deal with Iran.”

“We don’t want to be tough on Iran. We don’t want to be tough on anybody,” Trump added. “But they just can’t have a nuclear bomb.”

However, factions within Iran’s theocracy are still likely to oppose talks, whether out of their own self interest or over lingering anger over Trump’s 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the country’s top general and a revered figure.

That killing fueled Iranian calls for Trump’s assassination — and alleged plots against him. In November, the Justice Department disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Trump. While Iran denied being involved, Tehran has a history of plotting the killing of opponents abroad.

“This will not have any impact on the factions that oppose talks with the US but maybe some moderates find it as an excuse to say that Trump is taking some steps,” Iranian political analyst Ahmad Zeiabadi said.

For now, though, much of this can seem as conjecture and theorizing to many of Iran’s over 80 million people who continue to struggle in the grips of the country’s ailing economy.

Tehran taxi driver Gholanhossein Akbari, 27, insisted Iranians like him never benefitted from US support of Iran’s pro-democracy activists abroad.

“We did not see any result from the funds the US paid to foreign-based Iranian activists who only make comments in the media,” Akbari said.