With Joe Biden acknowledged in the United States on Saturday as the victor in the country’s presidential election, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that “the next US government should compensate for Washington’s past mistakes.” The foreign ministry issued a statement Sunday saying a list of issues is being prepared that the US president must be answerable to.

Later in the day, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei spoke for the first time after Biden's voctory, tweeting: "The reason for America's enmity with Iran is that we have not accepted their oppressive policies. The only way this enmity can end is to make them hopeless about their ability to hit us hard. We must be strong and reinforce our real tools of power. That is when the enemy will despair.” Enmity with the US is Khamenei's pivotal issue and mentioned in al,ost every statement. 

Rouhani’s focus seemed to be on Biden’s campaign promise to recommit the US to Iran’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal with world powers, which President Donald Trump left in 2018. According to the Iranian official news agency IRNA, Rouhani told the cabinet’s economics team it was “time for the US to return to the path of being loyal to international commitments and to respect international law.”

Rouhani said Iran had “always been loyal to its commitments” and had maintained “constructive interactions with the international community.” He claimed Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran, which had involved draconian sanctions after Washington left the nuclear agreement, was “doomed to fail.”

There was no word of Iran congratulating Biden on his victory – an approach shared with Russia, China, North Korea, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the early hours of Sunday congratulated “Joe” as a “great friend of Israel.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed that Tehran “values actions not words when it comes to dealings with the United States.” But in an interview with the Latin American television network, Telesur, before the media declared Biden’s win, Zarif referred to “obvious differences” between the Biden and Trump camps.

Rouhani’a and Zarif reactions sounded more pragmatic, devoid of the usual anti-Americanism that is characteristic of the Islamic Republic politicians.

Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s top security official, tweeted in English that he was not surprised by Trump’s defeat: “It is the fate of history. Most Americans rejected the record of a total failure that considered bullying as the solution…Is the elected [Biden] government wise enough to write under his picture in the White House: The lesson for posterity?”

The daily Kayhan newspaper, pillar of the principlist camp, appeared to welcome Trump’s demise. “Trump’s failure was a failure for America,” it opined. “It was a failure welcomed by the Islamic Republic and the resistance front. In Yemen, it marked the defeat of the Saudi aggression. In Lebanon, it was the failure of the US-Saudi front…The failure of the maximum policy against Iran will reduce the new US administration’s confidence in this policy and this will improve Iran's situation in the international arena.”

The IRGC-linked daily newspaper Javan wrote that the US election, regardless of its result, revealed the weaknesses of its democracy. “Regardless of the integrity of Trump’s claim [over rigging by Democrats], why should others doubt the corruption of the US electoral system when the US President calls his own administration corrupt?”

But the greater concern in Sunday’s newspapers was over what effect Biden’s victory would have on Iran. The reformist Ebtekar expressed a clear hope that a new US administration would return to its international commitments, and argued that Biden’s support for the 2015 nuclear deal would act as a green light to Iranian reformists to facilitate their victory in Iran’s presidential election in June.

Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf), a possible principlist candidate in the election, was unimpressed by Biden’s victory. On Sunday he likened all US leaders to pharaohs.