The text paints a picture of Donald Trump’s initial months upon returning to the White House, resembling a list of significant actions.
A newly elected populist president, famous for his inflammatory rallies and eye-catching antics, kicks off his tenure with a vigorous agenda.
He disrupts the nation’s foreign relations through a series of brash diplomatic maneuvers.
Key government institutions face significant cuts or closures in a fervent bid to reshape the administration.
Law enforcement agencies carry out dramatic public arrests of individuals labeled, rightly or wrongly, as violent offenders.
Critics accuse the administration of routinely violating laws. Educational institutions and the media come under scrutiny in an effort to stifle free expression.
A once-respected cultural establishment is taken over by the government and retooled with a conservative perspective.
Caught off guard, opposition leaders attempt to regain support by spotlighting rising food prices and the administration’s neglect of crucial domestic issues that were pivotal during the elections.
While this may aptly summarize the chaotic start of Trump’s second term, it also echoes events that transpired following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in Iran two decades ago.
Ahmadinejad emerged from relative obscurity to become a fierce adversary of the West upon his ascent in 2005. His incendiary remarks about Israel and outright denial of the Holocaust made him appear as a cartoonish villain, intensified by his hawkish support of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
He was an electoral populist akin to Trump, capable of drawing large crowds with his message of advocating for the marginalized while simultaneously antagonizing his adversaries.
Donald Trump: ‘much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding’, according to Steven Levitsky. Photograph: Francis Chung/EPA
Iranians have perceived these comparable figures. “There was a joke in Iran during Trump’s first term that when he became president, Iran finally managed to export its revolution,” noted Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born scholar of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. “Trump was essentially Ahmadinejad in the US.”
In an ironic twist, Ahmadinejad addressed Columbia University—a place currently facing potential funding cuts by the Trump administration for its purported indifference to combating antisemitism on campus—during a 2007 trip to New York. The university’s then-president, Lee Bollinger, confronted Ahmadinejad about his Holocaust denial, referring to him as a “cruel and petty dictator,” a depiction that foreshadowed the critiques made by many of Trump’s opponents.
However, the similarities are superficial, while the distinctions are equally notable.
Ahmadinejad, remembered for his signature plain white jacket, prided himself on his modesty and identified with others of similar background; by contrast, Trump conspicuously displays his wealth and retains billionaires in his inner circle, favoring them with substantial tax reductions.
Additionally, any comparison between Iran and the US necessitates caution.
Under the oppressive theocratic regime that emerged after the 1979 revolution which ousted the pro-Western monarch, Shah Mohammad Pahlavi, Iran was hardly a vibrant democracy before Ahmadinejad took office—despite a brief period of liberal reform under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.
“He came to power in an already deeply authoritarian regime,” stated Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was present in Iran when Ahmadinejad ascended to the presidency. “He took what was already a seven on the repression scale and made it a nine.”
Yet, the ability to draw any analogy at all highlights the uncharted waters the US finds itself in during Trump’s rule.
In recent weeks, with the president and his supporters attacking judges and suggesting they may disregard court rulings, commentators and experts have warned of an approaching constitutional crisis and a drift towards authoritarianism, potentially even dictatorship.
Scholars have pointed to numerous global precedents in search of parallels that might shed light on the trajectory of US democracy.
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Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is often cited as a forerunner of Trump. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images
Commonly referenced examples include Hungary and its strongman leader, Viktor Orbán; Turkey, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been in power for 22 years and has purged judges and military officials who upheld the secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; and Russia under Vladimir Putin. The trajectories of all three are frequently perceived as cases of democracies and once-independent institutions being compromised and elections manipulated to benefit the incumbent.
Conversely, there are positive trends emerging in Poland and the Czech Republic, where right-wing populist nationalists recently lost power to parties or candidates dedicated to the liberal democratic framework and international organizations like the EU and NATO.
Nonetheless, none of these instances rival the intensity with which Trump has dismantled federal agencies, criticized judges, and issued transformative executive orders.
This predicament was encapsulated by Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and author examining the decline of democracy and the rise of autocracy, who remarked to the New York Times that he had witnessed nothing comparable to Trump’s assault on democratic institutions.
The first two months of Trump’s presidency were “much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding,” Levitsky stated. “Özdogan, Chávez, Orbán—they concealed it.”
Others concur that Trump’s actions signify greater severity than those observed in other democracies transitioning to autocracy.
“The most fitting parallel I can draw is the collapse of the Soviet Union,” remarked Nader Hashemi, a Georgetown University professor specializing in Middle East and Islamic studies, who shares Iranian heritage.
“A political order that many believed would endure swiftly disintegrates, creating confusion, while people seek clarity regarding the future.
“We lack comparable precedents during this moment when a long-standing democracy that holds significant global power collapses rapidly, veering towards authoritarianism. Its repercussions will also be felt worldwide.”
King Henry VIII of England. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images
Nasr posited that Trump defies comparisons with historical authoritarian figures, likening the current administration to the court of King Henry VIII, known for his six marriages and for sparking the English Reformation.
“The manner in which he establishes authority in the White House resembles a Tudor monarchy more than a modern autocracy,” he argued. “The White House resembles an imperial court.”
Nasr insisted that Trump “embodies a doctrine of swift and sweeping change,” reminiscent of military coup leaders in developing nations who deemed their goals irreconcilable with democratic norms.
The shared origins of Trump and Ahmadinejad lie in the forces that propelled them into power.
“One could argue that the earliest backlash against the societal effects of economic liberalization occurred in Iran,” Nasr remarked.
Under Ahmadinejad’s predecessors, Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, market reforms aimed at fostering prosperity after years of post-revolutionary hardship produced a wealthy, consumer-driven middle class but alienated a significant portion of the populace that felt neglected.
“It created a demographic in Iran analogous to Brexit voters in the UK or Trump supporters in the US,” Nasr stated. “Thus, Ahmadinejad emerged as an anti-establishment figure, similar to Boris Johnson during Brexit or Trump in his campaigns. There is indeed parallels.”
Hashemi identified another similarity in Trump’s criticism of universities and media—the sentiment mirrored in Iran before Ahmadinejad’s tenure, as hardliners sought to extinguish the liberties that reformers had introduced.
“Then Ahmadinejad arrives and continues down an authoritarian path,” he elaborated. “The key parallel between that era and now in the United States is that authoritarian regimes detest independent institutions—such as the media and universities—because they encourage free thought and hold power accountable. This explains the ongoing antagonism towards Columbia University and similar institutions.”
Ahmadinejad, having fueled inflation through populist financial incentives and facilitated the Revolutionary Guards’ economic dominance, ultimately faced marginalization by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader and the most influential cleric in Iran, who utilized Ahmadinejad’s authoritarian tendencies to consolidate further power for himself.
On the other hand, Trump—having dominated the Republican-led Congress, and now restricted solely by a constitutional limit on pursuing a third term that some of his supporters are requesting to amend—faces no such limitations.
“In some respects, Trump’s actions are even more sinister because he is attempting to convert a democracy into an autocracy,” asserted Sadjadpour. Given the deep disdain that Ahmadinejad’s critics held for him, this seems especially alarming.
