Should the US and Iran talk

[Mirak]

Which shah incident?
Iranians are not Arabs

[ksslemp]

Which shah incident?
Iranians are not Arabs

The Shah of Iran! Remember?

[areon]

I was saying Iranians don't like us for meddling in their government and Arabs all around don't like us for the way we dealt with oil before they took control.

[Mirak]

Which shah incident?
Iranians are not Arabs

The Shah of Iran! Remember?

which incident!?

[DogDoc]

I was saying Iranians don't like us for meddling in their government and Arabs all around don't like us for the way we dealt with oil before they took control.

Goes much, much deeper than that, of course. Mainly, it's that we're "infidels." They certainly liked our help (or more correctly, the major oil companies' help) in exploiting their oil fields. We liked the Shah because of his pro-western policies. The Iranians didn't like the Shah because of his pro-western policies. That the government fell into the hands of such a radical, fundamentalist Islamic mob should have been a major wake-up call for not only the U.S. but all of the West. Instead, we became victims of Middle East politics and got drawn into the regional conflicts such as Lebanon. The rise in power of fundamentalist regimes has pushed us to follow a policy that is biased towards Israel, our only true ally in the region.

[DogDoc]

Which shah incident?
Iranians are not Arabs

The Shah of Iran! Remember?

which incident!?

You're joking, right? 1979? The Shah deposed, the U.S. embassy stormed and America held hostage by a group of thugs disguised as students? Jimmy Carter hand-wringing over the crisis and in the end launches a rescue mission that ended in catastrophic failure? This was perhaps the lowest point I can remember being an American.