gave up its pursuit of nuclear weapons its bostick missile development program which is designed to create delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons or game support for terrorism to stop this other malign activities across the region we'd be very happy secretary pump aoe last year gave a speech realistic 12 things i've given you for a story an expanded list that's the endgame we want i so let's bring in our panel for today's discussion joining us now from tehran is my stuff. journalist and political commentator from vienna money go to see economist at the vienna institute for international economic studies and from washington d.c. alley vias director of the iran project at the international crisis group gentlemen welcome to you all ali let's start with you is iran's president right as the white house lost its mind. well without any doubt the latest round of sanctions are absolutely counterproductive for an administration that pretends that it's

interested in negotiations to target the political leadership of iran and try to designate iran's foreign minister iran's chief diplomat it's really a signal that this administration is not interested in negotiations otherwise it would not increase the political part price of engagement would it $40.00 iranians in way that would actually render talks almost impossible not to go to see in vienna what's the purpose do you think of these sanctions is a diplomatic is it economic what effect they intended to have. well and to my humble opinion i think it has several consequences and several reasons one of the reasons which is which come to my mind is really is that i think mr trump is somehow annoyed with the message that he received from the japanese prime minister. and that's that's one of the most obvious reason that you should think is just war wards but the other reason could be of course economic reason.

well we saw that iran is not able to sell its already and now it is it's only selling about $200000.00 barrels per day so it's riven you. to feel its budget from this source of all i'd say is much lower now and during in government has been trying to increase the taxation on somehow some semi public companies in iran and as vs as we all know as of you can almost know in iran that georgio semipublic companies like foundations like exit q shins are somehow. the head of these semi public companies are directly elected and selected by the supreme leader once in a while so if mr trump imposes sanctions and supremely that means that all companies so many public companies that are somehow organized by discipline rated by the

supreme the there are somehow paralyzed now even though these companies do not have much trade or investment did foreign entities in foreign companies these so many public companies are huge and large for instance the one of the most transparent foundation in iran is foundation of revolutionary most as a fiend which is. very huge and transparent company in iran it's one of the best actually but there are so so many other foundations and also executives for instance. exactly. in moms or their which by some estimates it is somehow accumulating about 10 to 12 percent of the total capital in iran and other one is for instance are somewhat resurveyed these companies are huge and they are controlling the economy of iran and they are exempted from tax so i think the government of iran was trying to get some taxation and some help from these companies but receded within the sanctions even though they're not having trade

relations are necessary to read other countries you see that somehow it might affect them and it might have a government budget stuff a concession iran says that all hopes for diplomacy have gone now have these sanctions raised or diminish the prospect of a military conflict. well look let's talk about the sanctions where they are you know the sanctions on i.r.s. you see the offices office of the rain in supremely there and affiliated kompany them bodies they have already all already been on the sanctions especially the i.r.g.c. the they've been on there several rounds of sanctions the most comprehensive won't was cats and which was pursued by labeling the i.r.g.c. as a terrorist organization that entailed the harshest ever unitive action against the i.r.g.c. an affiliated kompany firms offshore accounts and companies abroad so basically the

u.s. has never been short of sanctions to go harsh against iran what they need to have is identifying these offshore accounts and companies and imposing sanctions would not help them in this regard they have done already what they were they could so this would not bring in any new result the only thing that seems to be interesting and happens probably for the 1st time is imposing sanctions on mr zarif while this has a lot of meaning 1st of all they have placed him on the same set of sanctions that have been put on i.r.g.c. bringing them on their one umbrella pushing them closer to each other to stand against the united states and stressing that resistance now is the only option against the united states that's the 1st result they have killed any diplomatic hope that they could have for talks with iran and this shows that their offer of

thoughts has never been genuine also you know that all throughout the last day kate there were there was in the minora t. who supported talks with the u.s. and majority who criticized the talks with the u.s. believing that the u.s. is not for a conflict was. in the ocean the ones to contain iran's power components in various areas ever since donald trump rose to office the minority group has lost its sistan specially among the public now i feel there is a change there has been a change of view and they have developed a new set of warthe view now also they believe that resistance and not talks with the united states is the only option that majority group where will read all throughout the last decade about behind this they talks or track to diplomacy but i believe now they can rest assured that there won't be any behind us states talks

there won't be any track to diplomacy because the us has shown that it's willing to antagonize iran and satisfy an f.p.s. saudi arabia and israel so basically there won't be any cause for perceivable future now let's let's put that out john bolton says the door is open for iran for talks at any time but how can you maintain a lot of dialogue with a country if you've sanctioned its foreign minister. the reality is that you can't and that's i think something that john bolton is fully aware of in fact in 2017 he wrote an article in the national interest when he was out of the trumpet ministration and didn't have actually much access to the white house he put out the plan to about how to kill the the nuclear deal and how to isolate iran and pressure

iran and one of those elements was that he emphasized that he believes once the u.s. withdraws from the nuclear deal that they run as would not renegotiated but the u.s. should talk about the possibility of talks again just as a way of scoring a point on the international scene and basically making the u.s. look like the flexible party and iran as the inflexible party at fault so i don't believe that the front for the ministration is genuine and serious about negotiations i think the president himself is interested but unfortunately here surrounded by a group of iran hawks who are deliberately in step by step goading him towards a military confrontation with iran. what is the u.s. administration's before those surrounding the president's beef with iran why is iran a line actor in the region according to those in the u.s. administration when saudi arabia and the u.a.e.

are not. well you can see that from the past 4 decades and you can see that since the islamic revolution. iran did not like to have a very good relationship with the united states and that is somehow. dipping down in the history of iran that you saw that there was a military coup or somehow and organized by the cia much earlier and. what do we see that we see that in deposit for decades there was only animosity and iran did not show and also us in the us did not show. good faces to each other actually since 1079 since 1980 you at united states imposed crippling sanctions against iran and iran also itself somehow self isolated itself from the international economy. that being said i think the only chance that united states

could convince iran to come to the negotiation table is to give something to iran for instance. and that is this our administration cannot somehow go back to the deal of course because it is you show some homes some sign of weakness but at least it could offer something to iran so that iran can come to the table for instance by letting iran to sell its oil that could be some have a convincing incentive for iran to come to the negotiation table all right let's put that to the stuff in tehran of course this all started i mean with the current in a ministration of 2015 with president trump wanting to rip up the nuclear deal but has it moved beyond that now do you think beyond the fear of iran developing nuclear weapons and of course iran's foreign minister said again on tuesday that iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon but has it moved beyond that and to more i don't know a ideological difference over iran's foreign policy is that what is is that

the u.s. is beef with iran. well you know this fight many who believe the drum is moving along a different path president obama i believe if we had hillary clinton or obama administration in office now there would goal busy roughly the same path but with different techniques of course after trying to stage a coup d'etat as or where the revolutions and imposing sanctions even considering the military option in 2002 and 3. they came to realize that they may not topple the zombie group public but they should develop a plan in order to contain iran's you know out iran's power outside the ball of the border where there is a clash of interests between the 2 sides and the develop the engagement for the

sake of containment policy to impose harsh sanctions and pulls a credible military threat to force the iran to the negotiating table that's what president obama the and i believe that what mr trump is doing he is no different he is trying to do the same you sanctions post credible military threat to change their calculations in tehran in order to force the iran to give more and more concessions and talks now the only difference is that president is doing this you know strategy in a very inexperienced. way and apparently the ones that are come panning came and he himself picked them up like mr bolton missed the pump a l. he picked them up for this very reason to show that he's not afraid to waging war

in order to make the threat that military threat credible they say they are not moving along the same path the. gateman strategy pretty well their moves sometimes are outside the specified framework and hence they have come up you know with no result what they need to know is that this this gain has been exercised once iran now knows this game and the rules of this game and they have this side it to stand up because they know if they are cheated again if they are forced into talks under the same strategy then this would continue on and on and on until iran would lose all its power components and the nuclear industry mess island history a regional power and the list would continue so this is not not basically about nuclear bombs if nuclear a military nuclear capability mather then. it was the best to ensure that all

iranian moves are on their check ok why did they rip it through why did donald trump discard this nuclear deal this shows that they are they do not want as they have already stated that even europeans have stated they want everything i mean all uranium power components to weekend and then they intend to roll back the growth of iran in all of these areas busy i meet vai's and washington i want to get your reaction to that and also to john bolton spelled out his end game on tuesday as we heard of the beginning of the program is what the u.s. wants from iran realistic why should the u.s. be allowed to dictate to countries like iran how it should be behaving in its own backyard to dictate its foreign policy. sure look 1st of all i disagree with the statement by your other guest about. president obama's policy that if we had president obama in place now it would be almost the same thing with different

tactics the reality is that coercive diplomacy is a tool of statecraft that a lot of countries use and the united states because of its dominance in the global financial system uses it maybe a bit too much but the reality is that the obama administration used the balance of carrots and sticks in the case of the trumpet ministration they have put the carrots field on fire and they're only using sticks and even if they promise some incentives i think there because of the erratic behavior of this administration it will be entirely unreliable and that's why they are not successful in using maximum pressure to advance their agenda be it in the case of them as well though or in the case of north korea or in the case of iran. terms of your question i think the biggest problem that the united states has had with iran over the past 4 decades is the fact that it cannot tolerate iran's independent foreign policy. the countries

in this part of the world from the perspective of washington are either puppets or pariahs there is nothing in between and iran is the only country in this part of the world that can challenge the u.s. and israel's maneuvering space and that's what intolerable for the united states and i think the reason that sanctions are being used is not necessarily for behavior change because as many in this administration have said repeatedly they don't believe that the iranian regime is capable of changing its behavior so they are in fact after regime change this is again as i said does not apply to president trump but again he has now boxed himself in a position that sanctions are not going to render iran more amenable to negotiations or they're not going to alter iran's behavior. and he's running out of things to sanction so sooner or later we will get into a stage where we would have no choice other than taking military action which would have disastrous consequences for iran for us and for the entire region. president

trump has boxed himself in into a position is is the u.s. is the administration's losing the p.r. battle at the moment under these latest sanctions would social media companies like twitter be forced to close the account of iranian politicians like for mr jeffords a reef for instance i mean is that even in forcible. 100 out of that that's an interesting question i never thought about is but when you're talking about sanctions are you sanctions it should in will any activity. that entity or that better person on their sanction. is and is doing and that could be also relevant for to either count as valid and i think as al you also say that u.s. administration is pushing itself into a corner that it doesn't allow iran for any kind of reaction so in

fact iran should i mean should resist we've seen that yesterday that russia somehow is allowed ended council of europe and it seems that russian patience and also the other side's patience works and if iran sees that and if. iran wants to continue its patients its strategy i think it might become successful but it will be very harsh because not as we see that the economic situation for iranians is very very bad and actually worse than any other years prior to this to these sanctions and actually these are unilateral sanctions these are not one to last through sanctions that we think that they have the most harm but we see that they are these sanctions are somehow ending to a war military war because actually these order and you can all make war and own i'm afraid that that situation is somehow soon to come so i hope this is only my

hope that there could be some change in strategy because mr trump is a businessman and he knows how to bargain so in order to bargain you need to somehow increase your bargaining chips and power i think he managed to do that up to now and so he needs to find of a to somehow incentivize iran to come to the negotiation table. russia of course another country. the pursues an independent foreign policy on monday moscow said that it would look to counter these these new u.s. sanctions and they might be illegal to what extent is russia perhaps key to what happens next in this crisis well.