“Return to the nuclear talks!” This is the advice that China, France and Russia have been publicly giving to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s new team in Tehran since they assumed power last month. Other powers, notably Germany, have echoed that advice in private. There are signs that the new Raisi team may be listening to that advice or, at least, trying to prepare public opinion for a return to Vienna with its flag in its pocket.
Raisi, who had once dismissed any negotiations with big powers as “out of the question,” now says he always regarded negotiations as “one instrument of policy.”
Several developments have contributed to what seems a less belligerent stance by Tehran.
