![\"Official_Photo_of_Hassan_Rouhani,_7th_President_of_Iran,_August_2013\"](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Official_Photo_of_Hassan_Rouhani_7th_President_of_Iran_August_2013-e1376425574355.jpg\")
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In a new report<\/a>, the International Crisis Group suggests the election of Iranian President\u00a0Hassan Rouhani does present a potential diplomatic opening, and that the U.S. should organize direct bilateral engagement with Iran (as opposed to the hollow P5+1). “Now is not the time to ramp up sanctions against Iran,” ICG adds<\/a>.<\/p>\n The report’s recommendations will never happen because Washington isn’t interested in actually reaching a substantive deal with Iran.\u00a0Most of Obama\u2019s so-called diplomacy with Iran has been \u201cpredicated on intimidation, illegal threats of military action, unilateral \u2018crippling\u2019 sanctions, sabotage, and extrajudicial killings of Iran\u2019s brightest minds,\u201d writes\u00a0Reza Nasri at PBS Frontline\u2019s Tehran Bureau<\/a>. This, despite a\u00a0consensus<\/a>\u00a0in the military and intelligence community that Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons and has not even made the political decision to do so.<\/p>\n As\u00a0former CIA analyst Paul Pillar has\u00a0pointed out<\/a>,\u00a0the sanctions are \u201cdesigned to fail.\u201d Congress\u2019s legislation links the sanctions to a long list of Iranian policies not at all related to their nuclear program. This makes lifting them really difficult in the context of nuclear negotiations.<\/p>\n Beyond the obvious charade of diplomacy, the Iranians aren’t necessarily likely to be susceptible to U.S. proposals. And for very good reason: Washington is untrustworthy.<\/p>\n As the ICG report notes, Rouhani has experience in substantive diplomacy. He “is the architect of the sole\u00a0nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and the West, a not inconsiderable\u00a0achievement given the depth of mistrust.” But,<\/p>\n lessons he has learned from the\u00a02003\/2004 deal \u2013 and from the bitter criticism he subsequently endured at home \u2013\u00a0could well induce him to greater caution; in hindsight, the agreement was seen as\u00a0deeply flawed and one in which Iran\u2019s suspension resulted neither in recognition of\u00a0its right to enrichment nor in promised nuclear, technological, economic and security\u00a0inducements. A former colleague said, “he made all the concessions the Europeans\u00a0asked for in 2003 and 2004. But the West left him empty-handed and under fire from\u00a0Iranian hardliners”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s not the first time Iranian give has been met with nothing but American take.\u00a0After the failed talks in 2009 and 2010, wherein Obama ended up rejecting the very deal he demanded the Iranians accept,\u00a0as Harvard professor Stephen Walt has written<\/a>, the Iranian leadership \u201chas good grounds for viewing Obama as inherently untrustworthy.\u201d Pillar has concurred,\u00a0arguing<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0Iran has \u201cample reason\u201d to believe, \u201cultimately the main Western interest is in regime change.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite this, be prepared to see virtually the entire political and media establishment frame any U.S.-Iranian tension going forward as wholly the fault of the intransigent ayatollahs and assume nothing but goodwill on the part of Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a new report, the International Crisis Group suggests the election of Iranian President\u00a0Hassan Rouhani does present a potential diplomatic opening, and that the U.S. should organize direct bilateral engagement with Iran (as opposed to the hollow P5+1). “Now is not the time to ramp up sanctions against Iran,” ICG adds. The report’s recommendations will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-21010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21012,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions\/21012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21010"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}