With Trump Returning and Hezbollah Weakened, Iran Strikes a Conciliatory Tone

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As Iran faces domestic and foreign challenges, its bellicose rhetoric on the United States and Israel has given way to signs that it wants less confrontation.

A billboard in Tehran showing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

In mid-November, Iran dispatched a top official to Beirut to urge Hezbollah to accept a cease-fire with Israel. Around the same time, Iran’s U.N. ambassador met with Elon Musk, an overture to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inner circle. And on Friday, it will hold talks in Geneva with European countries on a range of issues, including its nuclear program.

All this recent diplomacy marks a sharp change in tone from late October, when Iran was preparing to launch a large retaliatory attack on Israel, with a deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warning, “We have never left an aggression unanswered in 40 years.”

Iran’s swing from tough talk to a more conciliatory tone in just a few weeks’ time has its roots in developments at home and abroad.

Five Iranian officials, one of them a Revolutionary Guards member, and two former officials said the decision to recalibrate was prompted by Mr. Trump winning the Nov. 5 election, with concerns about an unpredictable leader who, in his first term, pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran.

But it was also driven by Israel’s decimation in Lebanon of Hezbollah — the closest and most important of Iran’s militant allies — and by economic crises at home, where the currency has dropped steadily against the dollar and an energy shortage looms as winter approaches.

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Iran’s swing from tough talk to a more conciliatory tone was prompted in part by the results of the U.S. election, which will return Donald J. Trump to the White House. Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

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