Foad Shams is an Iranian journalist who supports US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and has written about him in the Iranian press. When asked what is it about the Democratic hopeful that interests him, Shams told Al-Monitor, “The image of an alternative America is the most attractive feature of the Sanders campaign. Sanders is an alternative voice. In fact, he has managed to change the general narrative about the United States. We Iranians have two different — but equally wrong — images in our heads regarding the United States.” Shams explained, “On the one hand, we have the image that is propagated by Iranian state television and other official media outlets inside Iran that depicts the United States as the absolute evil. The other image is the one propagated by Hollywood and some foreign media outlets that present America as heaven on earth and a place where everyone is happy.” He added, “However, the image that Sanders presents of the United States — its people and their demands — is real.”

Al-Monitor spoke about the upcoming US presidential election with an adviser to President Hassan Rouhani. He said on condition of anonymity, “[Hillary] Clinton is the candidate who has a real chance of getting elected. Sanders is unlikely to succeed. However, we have an old saying in Iran which goes, ‘If it does turn into doogh [an Iranian yogurt drink], it will be great!’” referring to an impossible scenario that can only be realized in a dream.

The Iranian presidential adviser added, “We are closely monitoring the presidential election in the United States. We have spent many sessions at research centers discussing the election and its possible outcomes with the experts. At this point, the administration is not planning to make any comments about any of the candidates, considering that we are still in the primaries. However, we have made our own predictions.” In regard to Sanders, the senior Iranian official told Al-Monitor that while Sanders is “of course a long shot … we had predicted that if he ever makes it to the White House, he could perhaps solve many of the problems between Iran and the United States the same way [President Barack] Obama has managed to solve some of the United States’ problems with Cuba, and that he could help tear down the wall of distrust in Iran-US relations that the supreme leader had talked about. His presidency could have been a historic opportunity for peace in the world.”