Abstract

Formal relations between the European Union (EU) and the Islamic Republic of Iran commenced with the Edinburgh Declaration in 1992. This declaration came more than a decade after the 1979 revolution, four years after the UN-brokered ceasefire that ended the Iran–Iraq war (1980–8) and barely three years after the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Grand Ayatollah Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini (the ‘imam’), passed away in 1989. Hence, after a decade of de facto no relations between Europe and Iran, European heads of state and government decided to examine how to conduct EU–Iranian relations in the future. ¹