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Washington, DC - Over seventy Congressional staff members attended a Capitol Hill briefing on Wednesday presenting the new report by NIAC that examines the impact of sanctions on Iran’s nuclear policy. NIAC President Trita Parsi and Research Director Reza Marashi discussed the reports finding that sanctions have failed to achieve their objectives, and foreign affairs journalist Laura Rozen moderated the discussion. Marashi and Parsi said that, while sanctions have imposed serious pain on Iran’s economy, they have been used by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to reinforce his narrative that the West seeks to hold back Iran’s development and deny it technology. Unless openings for counter narratives are created or efforts are made to break Khamenei¹s narrative, the panelists argued, key stakeholders in the Iranian regime will not push for altering the country’s nuclear stance. The report, which relies on exhaustively cross-referenced interviews with Iranian stakeholders, finds that they have sought to protect their own interests under sanctions instead of pushing for shifts in the government’s nuclear policy, and that the dominant view within the Iranian elite is that nuclear concessions will not yield any sanctions relief. The report, “Never Give in and Never Give Up”: The Impact of Sanctions On Tehran¹s Nuclear Calculus, was first presented on Tuesday at a well attended event at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday and in individual briefings for officials at the White House, State Department, Treasury Department, and Pentagon. |
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