Lessons of hindsight
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by Gareth Smith April 4, 2013

written by Gareth Smith April 4, 2013

The diplomatic pond rippled when Hossein Mousavian, the former Iranian nuclear negotiator, visited London’s Chatham House in February. Home of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House famously has rules whereby proceedings are not reported, although some were streamed on the Internet to members. Suffice to say that Mousavian, now a research scholar at Princeton, thinks opportunities were lost in nuclear talks between Iran and three European states from 2003 to 2005. I recently heard the same from Sir Richard Dalton, associate fellow at Chatham House and British ambassador to Tehran from November 2002 to March 2006. The 2003-05 talks took Tehran closer to a substantial diplomatic agreement with Western powers than at any time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. During the talks, Iran suspended uranium enrichment and signed up for intrusive United Nations inspections. However, former diplomats chatting does little. What is moving the ripples is that both

Gareth Smith

Gareth Smith was a distinguished journalist who reported from the Middle East for over two decades. He served as the Financial Times correspondent in Tehran, where he was the chief Iran correspondent from 2003, following his earlier role as Lebanon correspondent. Throughout his career, Smith covered Middle Eastern affairs for leading media outlets, including The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the BBC. He also contributed as an editor to Executive magazine. His work as a freelance journalist in the 1990s, focusing on the politics of Iran and Iraq, paved the way for his appointment at the FT. In 2009, he relocated to the west coast of Ireland, where he balanced freelance journalism with his passion for nature and the land.

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Lessons of hindsight
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