On his first visit to the US, Iran’s new president has spoken of a “new era of cooperation” with the west. It is an offer that intrigued diplomats, but left them struck by the constraints – ideological, internal and geopolitical – standing in the way of a substantive change in relations.
Masoud Pezeshkian came to New York for his first UN general assembly since his election asking the west to look at Iran again – largely by challenging the double standards that led to its silence about the massacres in Gaza. He has insisted Israel and the US, not Tehran, were the region’s troublemakers.
