After a good deal of consideration foreign ministers have gone ahead and imposed an oil embargo on Iran which will come into effect in a few months.

It's an assertive move welcomed by the White House as it tries to force Iran to bow to the will of the international community and put itself in a position where its nuclear programme is transparent and incapable of producing weapons.

Suzanne Maloney an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former State Department policy adviser spoke to the Today programme's Justin Webb about what the White House expected the result of the oil embargo decision to be.

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