Let me begin with the second one. I have never believed that the sanctions have worked, but I have written many times that the sanctions seem to help the regime.
When the regime has $80 billion to $100 billion in oil revenues to play with; when it has China, Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates, and even some European companies willing to help it; and when the regime has an estimated 40,000 companies based in the United Arab Emirates whose sole job is to buy embargoed commodities, bring them into the United Arab Emirates, and then ship them across the channel to Iran, then embargoes seem to play into the hands of the regime, because they offer an excuse for its incompetence. They offer an excuse for its absolutely embarrassing corruption and incompetence.
The only kind of sanction that works against this regime is a sanction that we can't get, because I don't think China or Russia will ever agree to it. It's the kind of sanction that was used against South Africa; in other words, it would be a sanction that would end the buying of oil and gas from Iran. Oil and gas sales are the source of 70% of the government's revenue, and some people estimate up to 80%. If the world stops buying oil and gas from Iran, this government will listen to anything the world has to say. Otherwise, limited kinds of embargoes just play into the hands of the regime and allow the most corrupt elements of the regime to become even richer.
Again, I have always been for negotiations with this regime. I have never believed that not talking to this regime is a policy. Not talking is not a policy; not talking is a failure of having a policy. My suggestion has been, and still is, that the west must talk to this regime, but it must talk with this regime with the issues of human rights and the democratic rights of the people on the table, front and centre.
The example that I have often given in the past is the example of how Reagan, after two years of not negotiating with the Soviet Union, decided to resume negotiating with them. He did negotiate with them, but he also kept the Helsinki issues--the human rights issues, the dissident issues--part of the discussion. Unless human rights and democratic rights are kept part of the discussion, the Iranian democrats, the Iranian citizens, will think that the west has sold them in return for a promise on the nuclear issue or the oil issue. That would be detrimental to the future of the democratic movement in Iran.
The democratic movement in Iran needs, I think, to know that the west is aware of its existence and aware of its legitimacy, and to know that while the west is pursuing its own interests, as it should, and negotiating with this regime on the nuclear issue, it will not “do a Libya”, or what the Iranians now call “the Libya syndrome”. This syndrome says that if Libya gives up its nuclear program, then its egregious errors and breaches of human rights are going to be forgotten, and that Libya's leader will be treated with kid gloves, will be invited to the capitals of the west, and will not be treated as the criminal he is, but, though an oddity and a quirky character, as the leader of a nation that needs to be welcomed.
My hope is that the Libya syndrome doesn't happen.