Hinckley Institute Radio Hour – This week on the program, we air a forum featuring journalist and foreign policy expert Barbara Slavin on current U.S.-Iran relations and the history of the relationship between the two nations.
More than 40 years since the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the United States-backed monarchy, the political tension between the U.S. and Iran continue to draw fears of outright war. In 2002, the hostility between the U.S. and Iran was codified when President George W. Bush included Iran in his infamous “Axis of Evil.”
The 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal seemed to herald an improvement to this political status quo between the U.S. and Iran with multilateral support from signatories China, France, Germany, Russia, the EU and the U.K.
But in May of 2018, the Trump administration decided to pull out of that deal, leading to the reimposing of sanctions and putting relations back on an unstable footing. The downing of a U.S. drone by Iranian forces in July of 2019 nearly led to armed conflict when President Trump responded by ordering a military strike. He later reversed the decision.
Today on our program, Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, gets into these recent developments, their historical precedents and potential futures for the U.S. and Iran.
This forum was recorded on October 24, 2019.
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