Tehran faces deal or downfall under Trump, Lévy says

Donald Trump's presidency could either bring Iran's rulers toward a grand bargain with the United States or a collapse rivaling that of Nazi Germany, French celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy told Iran International.

"The creed of Trump, his ideology, is deals, making a deal, the art of a deal - the title of his book. You never know if he won't have the temptation to make a deal with Iran, with the regime - he's such a lover of deals," the public intellectual said in a TV interview.

"He thinks so much that the best way to deal with grand history is to make deals that we could have a big surprise - Israel could have a big surprise."

Trump said on election day this month that he wishes Iran no harm but that Tehran cannot have nuclear weapons.

“My terms are very easy ... (Iran) can't have nuclear weapons," Trump said. "I’d like them to be a very successful country,” he added, but declined to detail specific plans for US-Iran relations.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to resolve US enmity with Iran through diplomacy and in a pre-election interview appeared to rule out seeking regime change there, saying: “We can't get totally involved in all that. We can't run ourselves".

But Trump in his first term withdrew the United States from an international deal over Iran's nuclear program, saying the Barack Obama-era agreement allowed Iran to shore up its finances and step up aid to armed allies in the Mideast.

His order to assassinate top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in 2020 earned him the lasting ire of Iran's rulers, who according to US law enforcement have been seeking to assassinate Trump and key aides in retaliation.

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can weather domestic political struggles, Lévy said, it is also possible Israel and a Hawkish new Trump administration could join forces and take down Iran's Islamic system.

"You may have a coalition helping not only to defeat Hezbollah and Hamas, but to liberate Iran," he said, referring to Iran-backed Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups.

"At the end of the day, the real stake, the real aim or target is the liberation of Iran. When Iran is free, it is like when Germany was free in 1945 - it was a moment of deliverance," he added.

Lévy said Iranian civil society opposed to its rulers was part of a "global West" along with Taiwan, Israel and human rights defenders in Turkey: "the West is a category of the spirit and Iranian civil society is one of the core parts of this world."

Those domestic forces for change had already made progress toward unseating Iran's theocracy, he added, despite repression and imprisonment.

"Nobody can doubt that the boiling forces of dignity, of spirit, of youth, of civilization are there and that they are already prevailing," he said, addressing Iranian civil society.

"Most of the road you already covered under the veil, alas, sometimes under the boot, under the roof of jails, under the roof of the rooms of torture. But you made it with an incredible bravery."