HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029735 traditional approach vis-a-vis my country." But if Washington remains committed to ever-tougher sanctions — and without promising Iran that sanctions will be lifted as part of a deal — then negotiations are unlikely to succeed. Vali Nasr, another former Obama administration official with expertise on Iran, suggested recently that there's not much more the world can do to sanction Iran, and that such penalties could drive Tehran to take radical action. The regime of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activity "really has reached its end," Nasr, dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said during the World Economic Forum in Davos. And he warned that unless there is a diplomatic breakthrough — or, alternatively, an attack on Iran — "you really are looking at a scenario where Iran is going to rush very quickly towards nuclear power, because they also think, like North Korea, that (then) you have much more leverage to get rid of these sanctions." Robert Dreyfuss is an independent, investigative journalist in the Washington, D. C, area, who writes frequently for The Nation, Rolling Stone, and other publications. His blog, The