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This article analyses the US–EU transatlantic dialogue on the Iranian nuclear dossier with a particular view to the implications for EU foreign policy on Iran. Doing so, it uses neo-Gramscian scholarship to put the EU’s “over-compliance” with Iran sanctions into perspective. Constrained by the imperatives of hegemonic coercion in the form of US financial Iran sanctions against third country entities and with the hegemonic consent of a Western US-led “historic bloc”, Europe was relegated to a subaltern below its mediatory potential. It will be shown how this finding complicates the EU’s ambition to renew relations with Iran. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with experts and delegation members from the P5+1, this article thus analyses “the normative element” in the transatlantic security dialogue on Iran at a time where the latter is undergoing a sea change in the wake of the implementation of the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” of July 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In its foreign policy towards the Iranian nuclear programme, China is unwilling to join the partially harsh anti-Iran rhetoric of the US and the EU3. China has averted the imposition of sanctions and only abstained from its veto power as a permanent UNSC member after considerable diplomatic persuasion by 'the West'. Beijing was cautious not to spoil its image as a 'responsible Great Power', walking a diplomatic tightrope in balancing a pragmatic-commercial approach to business in Iran and mollifying Western security concerns related to the Iranian nuclear programme, following the tradition of Deng Xiaoping's doctrine of 'maintaining a low profile'. Increasingly, however, China is conveying a more assertive foreign policy and is no longer hiding its strategic interests. This paper argues that with the EU3 being at the forefront of nuclear diplomacy with Iran, disagreements with China over the EU's recent sanctions policy against Iran can, but need not, be a step in the direction of EU-China strategic alienation in the search for long-term solutions to the Iranian nuclear stalemate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]