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The one thing Tehran would find more intolerable than the crushing impact of sanctions is raising the white flag because of them.

A series of escalations in both word and deed have raised fears of U.S.-Iranian military confrontation, either direct or by proxy. It is urgent that cooler heads prevail – in European capitals as in Tehran and Washington – to head off the threat of a disastrous war.

Responding to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure”, Iran has announced it will no longer respect all the limits placed on its nuclear research activities by its 2015 deal with world powers. With Washington having renounced the deal, the remaining signatories should hasten to save it.

The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is more likely to fuel resistance and retaliation than capitulation. Washington should heed past lessons lest it provokes a new nuclear crisis or a regional escalation.   

The Islamic Republic faces a mix of challenges and opportunities. While its rivalry with the United States and its allies in the Middle East is increasingly harsh, Tehran’s regional influence is unprecedented in recent history

It has been 39 years since US President Carter broke diplomatic relations with Iran. This video timeline shows how US policy sought to contain, confront, and at times engage with Iran over the last 40 years.

U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has exacerbated tensions between the two countries and endangered the agreement. In this excerpt from our Watch List 2019 for European policymakers, Crisis Group urges the EU to uphold the deal conditionally and to handle other security concerns in the region separately.

Remarkably, the Iran nuclear deal has survived the Trump administration’s withdrawal. Now it must weather 2019, its year of greatest peril, as mounting U.S. pressure tests Iranian patience. With Europe’s help, Tehran must keep sticking to the agreement in anticipation of sunnier times ahead.

Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director Joost Hiltermann presented this paper on the history of U.S.-Iran relations and the status of the Iran Deal at an 8 November conference organised by the Israeli-European Policy Network (IEPN) in Herzliya, Israel.