ELEANOR HALL: World leaders are today mulling over Iran's offer to negotiate on its nuclear activities, but there's already scepticism about the regime's sincerity.

While the chief nuclear negotiator in Tehran has today announced that Iran is willing to engage in serious talks about the West's demands that the country halt its uranium enrichment program, this contrasts with Iran's supreme religious leader who vowed yesterday that his country would not suspend its nuclear program...

MICHAEL ROWLAND: The problem for the UN is that sanctions will inevitably hurt Iranians who don’t necessarily agree with what the regime is doing. Afshin Molavi of the New America Foundation says Iran’s well-educated middle class would suffer the most.

AFSHIN MOLAVI: Well I mean this is probably the most pro-American secular middle class you're going to find in the Middle East region and it's very interesting because they are living in this theocratic regime.

Now, one of the things that this middle class is suffering under is a lack of economic dignity. There's widespread unemployment, high prices, underemployment and what I worry about is, if we were to see a robust economic sanctions program what we would be doing would be harming that same middle class that could be an ally to the United States.

And when you isolate countries you get Cuba and North Korea, you don't necessarily improve their behavior.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's Afshin Molavi of the New America Foundation ending that report from our Washington Correspondent Michael Rowland.

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