As the Biden administration prepares for the revival, in some form at least, of the controversial “nuclear deal” with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the usual suspects in Washington are peddling an old theme: Bringing Iran in from the cold!
The argument is that the Islamic Republic is behaving badly because, “excluded” from the outside world, it feels like a threatened lone wolf and thus obliged to adopt an aggressive posture.
The argument was first formulated in the 1980s by the then German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. It was then taken up by French President Jacques Chirac and passed on to a string of British foreign secretaries, most notably Jack Straw, who visited Tehran more than any other capital during his tenure.
