EU and Iran, a new window of opportunity
Editorial 17 May 2021This new issue of NEU, dedicated to relations between the EU and Iran, is out just while the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, is on a diplomatic tour in Europe, starting in Madrid. The diplomatic mission takes place just one month before the presidential elections in the Islamic Republic and in the midst of negotiations on the return of the United States to the 2015 nuclear deal. Zarif’s meetings will focus on “the expansion of bilateral relations” and should be framed in the general rethinking of relations between Iran and Western democracies in the new Biden era. In this new context, the European Union can play a very important role in creating a new international balance, also in view of a normalization of the Middle-East situation, back to being dramatic just in these days. In the difficult Iranian game, Europe has now a new window of opportunity. Not an easy one, but very important. The Union will succeed to persuade the Iranians to get back on a general path of compliance? And how will relations between Europe and the great Persian country be articulated in the new international context?
As always, we will try to describe for the complexity of diplomatic, economic and political relations through different points of view.
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