ABSTRACT
Introduction In late 2006, the United Nations (UN) Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend work at its nuclear facilities. This move ushered in a new phase in the tense standoff between the West and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. In particular, it demonstrated a US-EU consensus on how to deal with the Iranian challenge that had previously been lacking. While the US had always been in favour of a more muscular approach involving sanctions, the Europeans initially had focused on the diplomatic track. Transatlantic strains even during that time had remained limited, however, as Washington – lacking international support for its own strategy and preoccupied with the situation in Iraq – tolerated the European-led negotiations with Iran. The positions began to converge when the US shifted towards active support of the EU’s package offer to Iran in the spring of 2006. A rare example of European influence on US policies in the Gulf, this shift had as much to do with the facts on the ground, in that Iran refused to back down, as it had to do with the realisation in Washington that there was neither a viable military option at the time nor any prospect for a diplomatic breakthrough without US support. Transatlantic convergence became consolidated once the US and Europe jointly acknowledged the failure of their diplomacy-only efforts and agreed to transfer the issue to the UN in the autumn of 2006. In this case, it was mainly the Europeans who moved closer to the US position, conceding that a tougher stance was necessary to prevent Iran from going nuclear. However, notwithstanding the US-EU convergence after late 2006 to pursue a dual strategy of increasing pressure through sanctions and continuing to offer incentives that Iran could benefit from if it went along with the demands by the West (as well as Russia and China), the present international context presents enormous challenges to the West to come up with an effective response to the Iranian nuclear challenge. This chapter examines the evolution in the negotiating strategies adopted by the US and the EU in dealing with the Iranian nuclear crisis. First, a brief historical overview of the Iranian nuclear programme will be provided. Subsequently, the different strategies pursued by the US and the EU for dealing with the nuclear issue prior to the sanctions approach will be discussed. Finally, the reconciliation
in the US and EU approaches towards Iran and the constraints that the transatlantic alliance still faces in coping with the Iranian challenge will be analysed.1
