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Four more years of President Trump would almost certainly kill the Iran nuclear deal but the election of Joe Biden wouldnt necessarily save it.

The big picture: Rescuing the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is near the top of Biden's foreign policy priority list. He says he'd re-enter the deal once Iran returns to compliance, and use it as the basis on which to negotiate a broader and longer-lasting deal with Iran.

Breaking it down: Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018, restoring U.S. sanctions and piling on new ones under a maximum pressure campaign that has devastated the Iranian economy.

The European signatories to the deal France, Germany and the U.K. have been desperately trying to save it.

But the Trump administration is attempting to finish off the deal, in part by adding a thicket of sanctions that Biden might find politically painful to remove.

Iran's domestic politics may prove more challenging still. The "reformist" administration of President Hassan Rouhani has been badly burned, and hardliners are expected to take over following presidential elections next June.

Where things stand: There are obstacles demands that Iran might make, our own politics, the more complicated relationship that the U.S. now has with Russia and China so this is not going to be smooth sailing," Malley says.

It took Iran about six months to come into compliance with the JCPOA the first time says Ernest Moniz, the former energy secretary who played a key role in negotiating that deal.

That means the earliest Iran could return to compliance would be right around the time its next administration takes office.

Moniz says a revitalized JCPOA would provide the world with confidence that Iran is not building a nuclear weapons program its original purpose but would be insufficient.

In future negotiations, Moniz adds, "regional concerns will have to be more front and center."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the loudest and most influential critics of the 2015 deal.

The Trump administration has demanded Iran negotiate on all of those fronts as part of any deal and claims it will be forced to if Trump is re-elected.

What to watch: Biden envisions almost precisely the opposite path to a broader deal with Iran, but acknowledges there's no guarantee Iran will even return to compliance with the JCPOA.

Go deeper: Biden's allies-first approach to China

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How Biden might tackle the Iran deal - Axios

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responds to Sen. Roger Wicker's question on tweets calling for the 'elimination of the Zionist regime' during the Big Tech hearings.

Supreme LeaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran questioned why some countries have criminalized Holocaust denial on Wednesday inan uncensored post toTwitter, which is facing scrutiny for how the social media platformhas censored posts, like a recent New York Post article on the Biden family's business and political connections.

"Why is it a crime to raise doubts about the Holocaust?"Khamenei tweeted Wednesday."Why should anyone who writes about such doubts be imprisoned while insulting the Prophet (pbuh) is allowed?"

Meanwhile, members the U.S.SenateCommerce Committee asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about censorship bias.

Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., asked Dorsey why Khamenei's tweets "questioning the Holocaust...remain unflagged on Twitter's platform" despite the platform's decision to label tweets from President Trump about mail-in ballots and COVID-19 with links to more context.

TWITTER DEFENDS NOT BLOCKING IRAN LEADER'S TWEETS AFTER BLOCKING TRUMP'S

Dorsey agreed that someone denyingthe Holocaust would be spreading misinformation but added that Twitter does not "have a policy againstmisinformation, we have a policyagainst misinformation in threecategories" includingmanipulating media, specifically coded publichealth topics like COVID-19,andelectioninterference and votersuppression.

Khamenei's tweets about the Holocaust, nor his tweets threatening Israel orthe U.S., require labels under those qualifications. But Holocaust denial is a crime in several countries, including Germany, Austriaand Israel. Holocaust denial is not a crime in the United States, however.

SEN. JOHNSON PRESSES TWITTER CEO FOR EVIDENCE OF DISINFORMATION IN HUNTER BIDEN STORY

Dorsey later defended Twitter's stance thatKhamenei's posts are mere "saber-rattling" -- a phrase Twitter officials haveused to defend its decisions to keep the Iranian supreme leader's posts visible and unlabeled.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who also called out Dorsey for leaving up the supreme leader's tweets on Wednesday,called foran investigation into Twitter in alettersent in May to the Justice and Treasurydepartmentsfor violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Cruz had sent a letter to the social media giant in February requesting that it comply with U.S. law and stop providing services to the accounts.

ZUCKERBERG 'NOT AWARE' THAT FACEBOOK ELECTION INTEGRITY OFFICIAL WORKED FOR BIDEN

"Twitter sent a letter back saying their company policy was to allow as much discussion as possible, and they apparently believe they are exempt from the criminal laws of this country," Cruz told FOX Business' "Varney & Co." at the time. "So today, I asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation. Those sanction laws are designed to stop U.S. companies from facilitating Iranian terror."

Republicansargued during the hearingthat Twitter's decisions to not label tweets fromKhamenei and other foreign leaders who condemn the U.S. on Twitter, such as Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao, represent a double standard when compared to its treatment of the president.

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Democrats argued that Twitter and Facebook should be doing more to censor hate speech that could lead to violence.

Other tech and policy expertssay censoring more voices is not the solution to a more open internetand that social media platforms should avoid labeling or removing posts from anyone in an effort to encourage free speech online.

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Iran's Khamenei tweets about questioning the Holocaust; Congress asks Twitter about censorship bias - Fox Business

Followingreportsfrom Microsoft that it had blocked cyberattacksfrom Russia, China and Iranonthe presidentialcampaigns, the latestEconomist/YouGov poll finds that mostregisteredvoters think all three countries are trying to influence the election.

Three quarters ofregistered voters say they believeRussia is trying to manipulate the outcome, as do two-thirds forChina (67%),and six in ten forIran (61%).

Supporters ofPresident Trumpare especially likely (75%) to say they believe China is actively trying to influence the election, compared to three in five (62%)Bidensupporters.

In contrast, supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden are more likely (88%) than those who support Trump (60%) to say Russia is trying to influence next weeks election.

Theis no partisan difference when it comes to Iran,with63% of Biden supporters and 61% ofTrump supporters thinking the Middle Eastern nation is trying to affect the result.

Claims have previously been made by some on the Republican side that Ukraine had attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton.Few believed thisa year ago(19%) and few believe thatthe Eastern European country is trying to manipulate the current election either(23%).

Asked who these countries would want to be leading the US,votersthinkChina (51%) and Iran (42%) would favor Joe Biden, while Russia (56%) wouldprefer DonaldTrump.In comparison, voters are split on whether Ukraine would favor Biden (28%) or Trump (25%).

Related:America Speaks: Are they worried about foreign interference in the 2020 US election?

Supporters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden see election interference on the horizon

See thetoplinesandcrosstabsfrom this weeksEconomist/YouGov Poll

Methodology:The Economist survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 registered voters interviewed online between October 25 - 27, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGovs opt-in panel to be representative of all US citizens. The margin of error is approximately 3.1% for the overall sample.

Image: Getty

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Most voters think Russia, China and Iran are trying to influence the election - YouGov US

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years imprisonment in Iran in 2016, has been told she will stand trial on fresh charges next Monday.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was released to house arrest in March due to the coronavirus outbreak, was also told she would be returned to Evin prison after the hearing.

The move comes a day after it emerged that a UK court hearing on a debt owed to Iran had been postponed for six months. It was due to start on 3 November.

Both countries formally deny there is any connection between the debt case and the retention of British-Iranian dual nationals in Tehran jails, but officials privately acknowledge that the two issues have been linked. British sources said the postponement was sought by the Iranian legal team, but that has not been confirmed.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will face Abolqasem Salavati, a hardline judge who has been subjected to sanctions by the EU and the US.

Zaghari-Ratcliffes five-year sentence is due to expire next spring, but the fresh charges open the possibility of years more in jail.

3 April 2016

Arrest in Tehran

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is arrested at Imam Khomeini airport as she is trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter, Gabriella.

2016

Release campaign begins

9 September 2016

Sentenced

November 2016

Hunger strike

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's health deteriorates after she spends several days on hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.

24 April 2017

Appeal fails

1 November 2017

Boris Johnson intervenes

Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, tells a parliamentary select committee "When we look at what [she] was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism". Four days after his comments, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is returned to court, where his statement is cited in evidence against her. Her employers, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, deny that she has ever trained journalists, and her family maintain she was in Iran on holiday. Johnson is eventually forced to apologise for the "distress and anguish" his comments cause the family.

12 November 2017

Health concerns

Her husband reveals that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has fears for her health after lumps had been found in her breasts that required an ultrasound scan, and that she was now on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

3 August 2018

Hunt meets husband

23 August 2018

Temporary release

She is granted a temporary three-day release from prison.

14 January 2019

Hunger strike

8 March 2019

Diplomatic protection

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, takes the unusual step of granting her diplomatic protection a move that raises her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.

17 May 2019

Travel warning

The UK upgrades its travel advice to British-Iranian dual nationals, for the first time advising against all travel toIran. The advice also urges Iranian nationals living in the UK to exercise caution if they decide to travel to Iran.

15 June 2019

Hunger strike in London

Richard Ratcliffe joins his wife in a new hunger strike campaign. He fasts outside the Iranian embassy in London as she begins a third hunger strike protest in prison.

29 June 2019

Hunger strike ends

Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends her hunger strike by eating some breakfast. Her husband also ends his strike outside the embassy.

17 July 2019

Moved to mental health ward

According to her husband,Zaghari-Ratcliffewas moved from Evin prison to the mental ward of Imam Khomeini hospital, where Irans Revolutionary Guards have prevented relatives from contacting her.

11 October 2019

Daughter returns to London

Zaghari-Ratcliffe's five year old daughter Gabriella, who has lived with her grandparents in Tehran and regularly visited her mother in jail over the last three years, returns to London in order to start school.

17 March 2020

Temporary release

Amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, she is temporarily released from prison, but will be required to wear an ankle brace and not move more than 300 metres from her parents home.

8 September 2020

New charges

Iranian state media reports that she will appear in court to face new and unspecified charges. In the end, a weekend court appearance on a new charge of waging propaganda against the state that could leave her incarcerated for another 10 years is postponed without warning, leading Zaghari-Ratcliffe to say "People should not underestimate the level of stress. People tell me to calm down. You dont understand what it is like. Nothing is calm."

28 October 2020

Return to prison threatened

Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told she is to stand trial on fresh charges and will be returning to prison after the hearing.

On Tuesday her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, spoke to the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and called on the UK to assert its right to consular access so that British officials could attend the new trial and visit his wife.

Iran does not recognise dual national status. Raab assured Ratcliffe that the UKs diplomatic push was ongoing and that the government did not judge it time to change strategy.

Ratcliffe said: We disagreed on this. Seclusion of the victim, with bouts of conspicuous cruelty in the face of decisions to wait, are key pillars of hostage taking. Both must be challenged robustly if British citizens are going to be protected from hostage diplomacy by Iran or others.

He added: I do think that if shes not home for Christmas, theres every chance this could run for years. So I really hope theres something we are not being told, as on the face of it the governments response seems disastrous.[Its] just extraordinary that they wont change course.

Ratcliffe said a court summons was delivered to his wife by two very large IRGC [Revolutionary Guards] guards who came to her parents door. They told her that she should pack a bag with her for Monday, and should make sure she brings with her all her clothes and necessary medications, as she will be going back to prison after her court appearance.

Ratcliffe recalled a number of emotional telephone calls with his wife, who described herself as an emotional wreck.

Tell me every day that I wont be taken back in. This is my nightmare. Tell me that the only way to go now is to come home and not backwards, not after four years and eight months. Someone can help me, surely? she said, according to Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe said the court summons came after months of uncertainty and anguish, and he described his wifes release with an electronic tag as a cat-and-mouse game by the Iranian authorities.

Nazanin is under effective house arrest unable to go anywhere, or have anyone dare visit. Even close friends fear the association. Since her last court appearance she has been harassed by the Revolutionary Guards on average at least once a week. She is reminded repeatedly that while she might go home, she also might soon be back in prison, he said.

Tulip Siddiq, the MP for Hampstead and Kilburn where Zaghari-Ratcliffe lives, said: Nazanin has once again been treated with utter contempt, and I am extremely concerned about her future and wellbeing. The fact that she has been told to pack a bag for prison ahead of her court hearing doesnt fill me with confidence that this will be anything close to a fair trial.

The timing of this development alongside the postponement of the court hearing about the UKs historic debt to Iran raises serious concerns. I can only hope that there is work going on behind the scenes to resolve the debt quickly because we seem to be going in completely the wrong direction and Nazanin, as ever, is paying the price. The foreign secretary must assert the UKs right to consular access and ensure that UK officials are present at Nazanins trial.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to stand trial on fresh charges in Iran next week - The Guardian

For Iranian Americans, the election of Donald Trump was more than an expression of intolerance and ignorance in the United States. It was an assault on their basic civil rights and the existence of their country of heritage.

In the past four years, Iranian Americans have been torn from their families, stripped of their bank accounts, and arrested at the border. A continuation of the status quo would make the community an ever-more vulnerable minority, especially as the drums of war against Iran beat louder.

The plight of Iranian Americans is proof of not only the inherent dangers of a xenophobic commander-in-chief, but of the corrosive effect warmongering policies abroad have on civil liberties at home. Many of the challenges faced by the community today are a direct consequence of tensions between the US and Iranian governments, such as the Muslim ban that mostly targets Iranians and is grounded in debunked security excuses, or broadly-written sanctions that have led to cases of banking and other services being denied to Iranian Americans.

The fact that Americans of Iranian heritage are now facing blatant discrimination should worry all Americans concerned with safeguarding the US as a constitutional republic. This moment calls for broad coalition building and bold political action among Americans from all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Iranian-American community is relatively affluent and highly-educated but by no means politically monolithic. In the 2019 Public Opinion Survey of Iranian Americans, almost seven in 10 of the respondents said they will probably (19 percent) or definitely (50 percent) vote for the Democratic candidate for president in 2020, while just 21 percent said they will probably or definitely vote for President Trumps re-election. The same poll demonstrated the top issues for the community are promoting human rights and democracy in Iran, preventing war, and easing sanctions. The community has met major setbacks on all these priorities in the Trump era.

For Iranian Americans, the Trump presidency categorically demonstrated: If you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Trumps feverish march to war with Iran has already led to the curtailment of their civil rights and promises even more frightening consequences. This was exemplified in January when the US assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and brought the two nations to the brink of war. Soon after the news of the assassination made headlines across the world, reports emerged of hundreds of Iranian Americans being stopped after re-entering the US from Canada. Many had simply gone across the border for a concert only to be held and interrogated upon their return about their political views and allegiances. It later became evident this was not some isolated incident by a few bigoted border officials but stemmed from a directive from US Customs and Border Protection.

While Americans of Iranian origin face a growing atmosphere of discrimination, Iranians in Iran have suffered far worse from the devastating US economic sanctions imposed in recent years. These sanctions are creating unprecedented poverty and crushing the Iranian middle class and civil society. The academic literature shows they will diminish the potential for peaceful democratic change and entrench authoritarianism. Despite this, President Trump has doubled down on his reliance on sanctions even amid the coronavirus pandemic and coupled it with threats to destroy Iranian cultural sites and end Iran.

The Trump era has made the stakes crystal clear for many Iranian Americans: Either organise politically and make your voice heard or face increasing persecution. There currently exist several Iranian American advocacy organisations aiming to do precisely this, and I work for the largest, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

However, Iranian American advocacy organisations are also caught in the crossfire between the governments of the US and Iran. Shockingly, efforts to silence Iranian Americans who seek to bridge the gap between the two societies come not just from Irans repressive government, but also the US government in recent times.

Last summer, a scandal erupted after it emerged that a US State Department programme created to combat Iranian government propaganda, the Iran Disinformation Project, was being used to smear and slander Iranian American critics of the Trump administrations approach to Iran, including journalists, academics, analysts, and organisations like NIAC.

While funding for the project was cut after its activities were revealed, attacks on Iranian Americans from State Department officials have continued. Recently, Ellie Cohanim, the State Departments assistant special envoy on combatting anti-semitism, accused Sima Ladjevardian, a Democrat running for Congress in Texass 2nd district, of being an Iran regime mouthpiece. The evidence against her? Having Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned in Iran for years, tweet about her.

The attacks by Cohanim and the State Department at large reflect a concerted effort to marginalise and increasingly demonise Iranian Americans opposed to the Trump administration. As Dylan Williams of J-Street opined, Cohanims remarks amounted to a reprehensible and bigoted dual loyalty accusation, an ugly canard that has been used to destructive effect against Jewish Americans for years.

Meanwhile, within Iran, Iranian Americans have always been viewed with suspicion by the countrys security agencies. While NIAC and similar groups are accused of seeking soft regime change for their efforts to improve US-Iran relations, numerous Iranian Americans have been arrested in Iran while visiting on the same charge. As Xiyue Wang, a Princeton PhD student who was imprisoned in Iran for three years, recently wrote, powerful elements within the Iranian regime believe reconciliation with the United States is threatening and unacceptable, and all attempts at rapprochement must be suppressed.

The challenges currently faced by Iranian Americans are just one example of how American democracy is in a crisis moment. Protecting the USs pluralistic and democratic traditions requires exposing Trumpism for the con it is, and groundbreaking coalition-building from Iranian Americans and Americans of all stripes.

President Trump has betrayed the voters who put him into power, particularly the white working class. His calls for overturning the Washington establishment and draining the swamp morphed into deconstructing the administrative state, as Steve Bannon put it. He protected corporate interests over anything else and rolled back consumer rights and environmental protections. He never replaced Obamacare or introduced an infrastructure plan. His tax-cut bill made the rich richer as the middle class continues to shrink. He never brought back manufacturing jobs. After being elected on a promise to end endless wars, he needlessly and recklessly took the US to the cusp of a catastrophic war with Iran.

The US desperately needs a new social contract. Even if Trump loses in November, defeating his legacy and preventing the rise of another populist demagogue in his vein necessitates Iranian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and white Americans (including those of rural and working-class backgrounds) making common cause and standing up for the ideals this country was founded on.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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What the US election means for Iranian Americans - Al Jazeera English