How about neither loosening nor strengthening sanctions? Are there only two choices here?

I'm not sure on the status of the recent Congressional decision, whether it has further to go before it is imposed. What could perhaps be done is to use them as the potential stick, and looser sanctions down the road as a carrot, in negotiations. In the meantime, keep those already in place during talks.

Imposing them now seems to me to be punishing the new government (and the pro-reform Iranians who voted them in) for the stance of the previous one. If we do not give them a little (and I do mean little) time and space, then they can't demonstrate any change.

Besides, as I've been trying to point out, sanctions imposed to try and 'change the regime' can be counter-productive, in that they can make us the cause of problems rather than the Iranian government, strengthening the hand of conservative forces in Iran. It is pretty much what I saw happening in Cuba, and what Mugabe is trying to emulate in Zimbabwe. The economy is important, but the Iranian regime has to be seen to mismanage it, not our sanctions.

Iran has sent some food to Palestine, that's the support they get? And 50 million pledged almost a decade ago, the US is no friend with Palestine yet sent 500 million earlier this year. Iran has also made it clear no aid would be sent at all if Palestine did not back Bashir in Syria...yep, Iran is a big supporter of Palestine!?

No, Palestine is nothing but a poster child and allows them to openly hate Israel, Ricky you did nothing to refute that position.

I don't understand you Tom. All i did was provide evidence that Iran has contributed aid to Palestine. Something you claimed they didn't do....

I also take Sas's point that the supreme leader may die and who knows what will happen. I'll just note that the last time the supreme leader died he was replaced by another supreme leader. Waiting for an old man to die is not a reliable policy as regimes have a way of continuing. Witness what happened when Lenin and countless other totalitarian dictators have passed on.

This is quite true of course, but I wasn't saying that all we have to do is wait for Khamenei to die and everything will be hunky dory. My point was that the election of Rouhani (and Mousavi before him, who blatantly won before they put the fix in) clearly demonstrates a strong demand for political reform among a majority of the Iranian people. Naturally the conservative elements in the regime will have plans for trying to rig the succession and may well succeed, but it can't just be taken for granted that they will. There are very influential figures among the Iranian political and religious elites who are in the reformist camp. They don't hold the power right now but they do still have a lot of influence and, perhaps more importantly, would appear to have the support of the populace.

Something like 55% of Iran's population is under 30 years old. Care to wager what proportion of those young people are staunchly conservative in their outlook ? More than half the population were not even born when the revolution occurred. Most of those won't have been born till after the conclusion of the Iran/Iraq war either, and those who were will have been too young to have any memories of it. I'd suggest that change is pretty much inevitable in Iran as the old revolutionary generation start to die off and the younger generation come through to take their place. What we can't know is the timescale of course, but nevertheless it would be silly to just assume that the belligerent Iran we see today will remain unaffected by the demographic changes that are looming.