Empire - Extended interview : Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.

He has served as the head of the foreign relations committee of Iran’s National Security Council from 1997-2005.

He has also been a spokesman for Iran during its nuclear programme negotiations between 2003 and 2005 with the European Union and authored a book titled The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir (2012).

In this in-depth 26-minute web exclusive, Mousavian talks to Marwan Bishara about the round of negotiations between 2003 to 2005 and more about Iran's relationship with the US.

"We failed mainly because of two reasons - the lack of direct talks with the US ... and the US position of zero-enrichment in Iran."