Will Ali Khamenei and Donald Trump ever meet?

By Nick Pelham, Middle East correspondent, The Economist

Since 1979, the Islamic republic of Iran has brandished four core slogans: death to Israel, death to America, export the Islamic Revolution and “cover or suffer”, an injunction for women to veil. The regime’s resolve to implement them has waxed and waned, but it has never formally abandoned them. Without them, supporters of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the 85-year-old supreme leader, might ask, what remains of the Islamic republic?