But while those most eager for a U.S. assault on Iran, or even regime change, held sway in the last Trump administration, several GOP lawmakers and officials are cautioning that those voices will enjoy far less clout this time around.

A secret meeting, reported by the New York Times, between Trump confidante Elon Musk and Iran’s U.N. ambassador as a preliminary effort to defuse tensions between Washington and Tehran could be the first such indicator of a seismic shift, analysts said.

Spokespeople for Trump’s transition team, Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations and Musk all declined to comment.

“This was a very interesting move,” said Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a Washington think tank.

While Trump during his first term ended U.S. participation in the Iran nuclear deal, levied strict sanctions and ordered the assassination of one of Iran’s most powerful generals, Qasem Soleimani, he also made repeated - albeit failed - attempts to open a dialogue with the Iranians. And he has mused about making a deal, including most recently on the campaign trail.

“I think he really wanted it,” said Parsi, surmising the Iranian government believed that too but thought Trump had been thwarted by the Iran hawks in his first administration, including his former national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Hook, who is a part of Trump’s State Department transition team.

Pompeo and Hook did not respond to requests for comment. Since leaving the administration, Bolton has written disparagingly about Trump’s “zeal for the deal” and warned in a July opinion piece that if Trump returned to the Oval Office, “his propensity to treat national-security issues simply as opportunities for making deals” could soon lead to a “get-together” between Trump and Iran’s new president.

In a separate piece this month, Bolton derided the incoming administration for continuing to cling to the “fantasy” that a deal was possible.

Come January, when Trump takes office for the second time, he will confront a drastically different Middle East, where Iran and Israel, as well as the United States and its Arab partners, are perilously close to a major confrontation, Parsi said.

“The region is already on the brink of exploding; the runway from ‘maximum pressure’ to actual conflict is much shorter today than it was in 2017,” he said. So the fact that Musk, one of Trump’s closest representatives, appears to have reached out to the Iranians signals a desire “to defuse tensions, while recognizing that there’s a very dangerous two months ahead and they have to avoid a miscalculation.”

During his first administration, several of Trump’s top advisers urged him at various points to take offensive action toward Iran, Russia and North Korea - positions often at odds with his desire to speak with hostile foreign leaders to see if they could reach an agreement.

In 2019, “most” of Trump’s national security staff was pushing for offensive strikes on Iran, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone, one former national security official said. Bolton, a longtime advocate of American military intervention in the Middle East, “desperately wanted to,” said this person, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. Trump readied U.S. forces to carry out the strikes but called off the plan at the 11th hour.

Bolton wrote in an email Saturday to The Washington Post that, among the advisers who attended the meeting in the Situation Room that morning, the opinion favoring strikes was “unanimous.”

There were at least two other instances during Trump’s first term, in which “the Iranians tried reaching out to Trump through third-party countries,” said Parsi, citing his own conversations with Iranian officials. “But it failed because of the involvement of Pompeo” - a staunch proponent of harsh action against Iran - “despite efforts by the Iranians to deal directly with Trump and not have to go through Pompeo, or not having Pompeo involved,” he said.

“And that has created an impression on their side that it’s very difficult to strike a deal with Trump, even if he wants it, if his desire to get a deal can so easily be blocked by hawks in his circle,” Parsi added.

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