As Iran meets world powers in Geneva today for this month’s second round of talks on its nuclear programme, there is much self-congratulation about the supposed effectiveness of the sanctions after decades of intransigence.
But the idea that it is sanctions that have brought Tehran to the table is wrong. The real cause is the desire of new President Hassan Rouhani to reach a rapprochement with the US, the EU, its neighbours and other world powers, alongside the fact that the US red line has changed from “no enrichment of uranium” to “no nuclear bomb”.
“It was not sanctions that brought Iran to the table,” Hossein Mousavian, Financial Times, November 19, 2013.
