Iran Says Biden-Trump Debate Too 'Emotional' To Be Taken Seriously

As Iran holds its own presidential elections Friday, officials from the Islamic Republic told Newsweek they saw little significance in the remarks made during the first 2024 election debate between President Joe Biden and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The televised bout, which took place Thursday night, proved to be among the most controversial in U.S. history, with many observers noting the sitting president's difficulty in speaking coherently and his rival predecessor standing accused of substantially misrepresenting facts. While the candidates sparred on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues, they notably both tried to portray themselves as tougher on Iran at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

In Tehran, however, the spectacle drew a largely dismissive reaction within official circles.

"We have no intention of interfering in the domestic politics of the United States," the Iranian Embassy to the United Nations said in a statement shared with Newsweek.

"However, we do not lend much credence to the remarks made in these debates and electoral activities," the Iranian Mission added, "as they are more emotional than logical and lack strategic backing."

U.S.-Iran tensions worsened throughout the tenure of both leaders.

After a brief period of de-escalation following the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached under former U.S. President Barack Obama, Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the multilateral agreement in 2018. The Trump administration significantly expanded sanctions against Iran, which in 2019 began to gradually reduce its own commitments to the accord.

That year saw a spike in attacks conducted by militias supportive of Iran against U.S. troops in Iraq, sparking a cycle of violence that crested with Trump ordering the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani and his entourage in Baghdad in January 2020. Iran responded with an unprecedented barrage of missiles targeting U.S. military installations in Iraq, injuring more than 100 U.S. soldiers.

Biden was critical at the time of both Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA and his decision to take out the nation's most famous military leader.

When Biden ultimately won a tumultuous election against Trump later that year, he announced his intention to restore U.S. participation in the JCPOA. At the same time, he maintained Trump-era restrictions against Iran and talks toward reviving the nuclear deal ultimately unraveled in late 2022.

The outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip last October, however, has emerged as one of the threats to regional stability in recent years. Iran is supportive of Hamas and allied Palestinian factions, and has also backed an informal coalition of militias known as the "Axis of Resistance" hailing from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and actively targeting Israel throughout the conflict.

During Thursday's debate, Trump asserted that, under his watch, "Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas," even claiming that no terrorist attacks occurred during his administration.

"You know why? Because Iran was broke with me," Trump said. "I wouldn't let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. No money for terror."

"That's why you had no terror at all during my administration," he added. "This place, the whole world is blowing up under him."

Biden hit back at Trump by pointing out that, during his administration, "Iran attacked American troops, killed, caused brain damage for a number of these troops, and he did nothing about it," and how he weeks later referred to the injuries as "headaches."

Biden also later took credit for having "organized the world against Iran when they had a full-blown kind of ballistic missile attack on Israel" in April, following Israeli airstrikes that killed Iranian military personnel at an Iranian consular building in Syria. Israel later reportedly conducted another attack at a military site within Iran.

The first-ever direct exchange of attacks between the two archrivals spurred discussions within Iran of potentially rethinking the nation's official ban on nuclear weapons and put the region on edge over concerns of a broader war erupting. Anxiety continues to grow today over the possibility of a wider-scale conflict as clashes intensify between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.

But as the White House for a ceasefire deal in Gaza and return to calm on the Israel-Lebanon border appears to falter, Biden himself is facing a wave of calls to step down given his debate performance that exacerbated existing worries over his age and mental acuity. A number of Democrats have begun openly discussing the possibility of fielding a new candidate just 129 days before the election.

Amid these questions of U.S. leadership, Iran, too, is preparing for a new president. Just 40 days after the sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter accident near the border with Azerbaijan, Iranians took to the polls on Friday to choose from five candidates, three of whom are considered front-runners.

The race is shaping out to be one of the most unpredictable in Iran's recent history, with a reformist candidate leading the polls and two principalists vying for support among different camps of conservatives. At the same time, the Biden administration has challenged the legitimacy of the election.

"As the Iranian regime prepares for its presidential elections, the U.S. unfortunately has no expectation of free and fair elections or fundamental change in Iran's direction," U.S. special envoy for Iran Abram Paley said Wednesday in a statement.

Responding to the accusations, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani called into question the results of the U.S.' own democracy.

"The world's nations have seen the results of American democracy inside that country and in various parts of the world and have experienced its bitter taste," Kanaani said. "For instance, the result of American democracy and human rights in the occupied territories is the criminals that are internationally notorious for occupation, racism, war, bloodshed, and terrorist activities."