This book investigates the European involvement in managing the nuclear dispute with Iran, shedding new light on EU foreign policy-making. The author focuses on the peculiar format through which the EU managed Iran’s nuclear issue: a ‘lead group’ consisting of France, Germany and the UK and the High Representative for EU foreign policy (E3/EU). The experience of the E3/EU lends credibility to the claim that lead groups give EU foreign policy direction and substance. The E3/EU set up a negotiating framework that worked as a de-escalating tool, a catalyst for Security Council unity and a forum for crisis management. They inflicted pain on Iran by adopting a comprehensive sanctions regime, but did so only having secured US commitment to a diplomatic solution. Once the deal was reached, they defended it vigorously. The E3/EU may have been supporting actors, but their achievements were real.

The first detailed Iranian account of the diplomatic struggle between Iran and the international community, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir opens in 2002, as news of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment and plutonium production facilities emerge. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, previously the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and spokesman for Tehran's nuclear negotiating team, brings the reader into Tehran's private deliberations as its leaders wrestle with internal and external adversaries. Mousavian provides readers with intimate knowledge of Iran's interactions with the International Atomic Energy Agency and global powers. His personal story comes alive as he vividly recounts his arrest and interrogations on charges of espionage. Dramatic episodes of diplomatic missions tell much about the author and the swirling dynamics of Iranian politics and diplomacy—undercurrents that must be understood now more than ever. As intense debate continues over the direction of Iran's nuclear program, Mousavian weighs the likely effects of military strikes, covert action, sanctions, and diplomatic engagement, considering their potential to resolve the nuclear crisis. Contents 1. The Origin and Development of Iran's Nuclear Program 2. The First Crisis 3. From Tehran to Paris 4. From the Paris Agreement to the 2005 Presidential Election 5. The Larijani Period 6. To the Security Council 7. Back to the Security Council and a New Domestic Situation 8. Iran Alone: The Jalili Period 9. U.S. Engagement 10. The Crisis Worsens 11. Conclusion

In Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear ‘Crisis’: Theoretical Approaches, Halit M.E. Tagma and Paul E. Lenze, Jr. analyze the ‘crisis’ surrounding Iran’s nuclear program through a variety of theoretical approaches, including realism, world-systems theory, liberal institutionalism, domestic politics, and multi-level games. Through these theories, Tagma and Lenze use established academic perspectives to create a more objective understanding and explanation of the debates and issues. Introducing the concept of eclectic pluralism to the study of international relations, Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear ‘Crisis’ presents theoretical approaches side by side to explore a complex and evolving international dispute.

The EU’s approach to Iran has emerged as one of the few successes of European foreign policy. Still, its role in international negotiations from 2003, as much as its broader approach to Iran, are generally poorly appreciated by policy-makers in Europe, the United States, and around the world. This book aims to explain the specifics of the EU’s approach to Iran, taking into account both the complexity of European foreign policy, in particular within transatlantic relations, and Iran’s (aspired) place in the international order. It informs the reader about the special negotiation format that included a number of world powers as well as multilateral bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Security Council. Furthermore, it provides an outlook on European post-nuclear deal strategies and offers conclusions on the effectiveness of Europe’s multilateral approach to foreign policy. By looking at the EU’s diplomatic activities towards Iran over more than a decade, the book focuses on Europe’s actorness in international politics. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners involved or interested in the European Union, Iran, U.S. foreign policy as well as Foreign and Security policy, including sanctions policy, and more broadly to European Politics, Middle East studies and international relations.

The recent controversy over Iran's nuclear programme represents an early and important test for a distinctively European approach to addressing concerns about suspected programmes for the development of weapons of mass destruction. Against this background, the report brings together European and Iranian perspectives on a range of security- and proliferation-related issues that have a bearing on diplomatic efforts to resolve the controversy. The contributors describe the discussions under way between Europe, Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency aimed at clarifying the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear activities. They examine the development of the European Union's strategy to combat the spread of WMD; Iran's evolving security and defence structures and policies, including Iranian thinking about deterrence-based defence strategies and the requirements for credibly implementing them; and the internal dynamics of security policy decision making in Iran. The report highlights some of the problems and possibilities inherent in the EU's efforts to implement a more targeted, multifunctional strategy to prevent WMD proliferation.

Much of the literature on the emerging role of the EU as a non-proliferation actor has only a minimal engagement with theory. This collection aims to rectify this by placing the role of the EU in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons within an analytical framework inspired by emerging literature on the performance of international organisations.

Entessar & Afrasiabi’s Iran Nuclear Negotiations (Rowman & Littlefied, October 2015) offered a thorough analysis of the negotiation process between Iran and the 5+1 great powers about its nuclear program. This book essentially builds upon it, focusing this time on the final nuclear agreement, the ensuing debates around it, and its global and regional ramifications especially in the Middle East. The first section analyzes the agreement through the prism of international relations theories, using a constructivist-critical theory approach. This is followed by an overview of the intense debates in Iran, the West, and other parts of the world, on the nuclear agreement and its various pros and cons, not to mention the connected, yet separate Iran-IAEA agreement. The second section covers Iran’s foreign policy and its various priorities, looking in particular at the impact of the nuclear deal on the country’s external relations and orientations, contextualized in terms of pre-existing issues and concerns and the profound influence of the nuclear agreement on the perceptions of Iranian power in the region and beyond. Iran’s relations with its Arab, Turkish, Russian, and other neighbors are discussed, focusing on both the direct and indirect impact of the nuclear agreement on these relations, especially the paradoxical implications of the nuclear deal with respect to the non-nuclear crises in the Middle East, such as the Syria-Iraq crisis, and the re-alignments that have put Iran at the crossroads of East and West. Other issues covered include energy security, regional economic cooperation, the endemic sectarianism highlighted by Iran-Saudi competition, and the deadlock on the Middle East peace process. The third section then examines the issue of a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone and the likely consequences of the Iran nuclear deal on this prospect, which, in turn, raises the issue of regional proliferation and counterproliferation. The last section explores some possible various scenarios and the challenges of implementation as a relatively long-term agreement, providing specific policy recommendations for the regional actors and the external powers that are stakeholders in the volatile Middle East.