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About the Event

For decades, the relationship between Iran and the United States has been fraught with tension and mistrust—from the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, in 1953 to the US Embassy hostage crisis from 1979-81, where armed militants held American hostages for 444 days; from the Iran-Contra scandal for President Reagan in 1985-86 to the Trump administration's US airstrike that killed General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

And now, with COVID-19 hitting Iran hardest in the Middle East and with the reimposed US sanctions since 2018, their economy is struggling and President Hassan Rouhani is claiming that their medical sector is being hit hardest by the sanctions in the midst of the pandemic.

The Council hosted a discussion on the ongoing sanctions on Iran, the threat Iran poses to the rest of the region and the world, and the diplomatic “know-how” required to reset the relationship between America and Iran, featuring Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council and Gary Sick, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar, Middle East Institute and Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.