![\"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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The U.S. and Iranian presidents are probably going to meet face to face at the U.N. today. “They may even shake hands, ” CNN reports. This would be pretty significant given the history of enmity between these two nations and it would follow several weeks of what cable news annoyingly refers to as a “charm offensive” by Iran’s new reformist president Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani has been aggressively getting America’s attention, writing in the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> about the need for a constructive diplomatic relationship.<\/p>\n Why this sudden change in Iranian engagement with the U.S.? If you ask the Obama administration or most anyone in Congress: the sanctions did it!<\/p>\n Trita Parsi, president and founder of the National Iranian American Council, has a piece up in Reuters<\/a> refuting the claim that the U.S.-led sanctions regime is what brought about Iran turn to diplomacy.<\/p>\n Washington’s “narrative,” writes Parsi, that Iran’s latest attempt for rapprochement with America is due to “the inevitable pain of sanctions finally changing Tehran\u2019s nuclear calculus,” doesn’t pass muster. Some history is in order to get closer to the truth:<\/p>\n Rouhani and the new esteemed foreign minister, Javad Zarif, played crucial roles in past Iranian efforts to engineer an opening to Washington \u2014 almost a decade before the strangulating sanctions.<\/p>\n Zarif\u00a0led the collaboration with the United States in Afghanistan in 2001<\/a>, where the two countries closely cooperated to oust the Taliban and establish a new constitutional government in that country. The Iranians were hoping Washington would appreciate their strategic help and improve relations. Instead, President George W. Bush listed Iran in the \u201cAxis of Evil.\u201d\u00a0The Iranian plan for rapprochement fell apart<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two years later,\u00a0this same team of Iranian officials offered the Bush administration a \u201cgrand bargain\u201d proposal<\/a>, addressing all major areas of conflict between the two countries. Among other things, the Iranians offered to open up their nuclear program for transparency, collaborate with the U.S. in Iraq, restrain Hamas and Islamic jihad and even indirectly recognize Israel.<\/p>\n The Bush White House\u00a0rejected the offer out of hand<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before the Ahmadinejad government took over, Zarif and Rouhani \u2014 who was then national security adviser and nuclear negotiator \u2014 reached out to the European Union. They offered to cap Iran\u2019s nuclear program at 3,000 centrifuges. The EU, however, did not take the offer.<\/p>\n These efforts\u00a0preceded<\/em>\u00a0the sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy. And they were made with the approval of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, though he maintains he believed they would fail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Americans are notoriously bad at history. And that’s why most people seem to be buying into this narrative about the effectiveness of economic sanctions: you need to disregard even the recent history in order to believe it.<\/p>\n It’s more likely the new push for detente is happening in spite<\/em> of the sanctions, since economic warfare typically hardens the positions of geo-political rivals. Back in February, the\u00a0International Crisis Group (ICG)<\/a>\u00a0published a paper assessing the efficacy of the sanctions on their own terms. \u201cWithout doubt, they are crippling Iran\u2019s economy,\u201d the paper finds. \u201cBut are they succeeding\u201d in pressuring Iran to concede to U.S. demands on its nuclear program? \u201c[P]lainly they are not.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Pape, a political scientist at Chicago University, years ago examined 115 cases of economic sanctions over almost 80 years and found\u00a0only 5 that could be considered a success<\/a>\u00a0(that is, the recipient nation changed policy in the desired direction of the imposer nation). That is a horrible track record.<\/p>\n