By TRITA PARSI
CIPS Policy Brief No. 14, February 2012

  • Barack Obama’s presidency began with a diplomatic outreach to Iran.
  • However, the space for diplomacy turned out to be limited, due in part to the effects of Iran’s fraudulent 2009 elections and related domestic pressures on Obama not to pursue negotiations.
  • The Obama administration consequently abandoned its plan for renewed dialogue with Iran, but in doing so it revealed a lack of patience: the diplomatic option had to succeed right away, or not at all.

Full text (pdf)

Trita Parsi is the president of the National Iranian American Council and the author of A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press, 2011).

Watch a video of Trita Parsi’s presentation at CIPS in February 2012.