Iranianforum.com, 19 August 2011

In a surprise speech, President Obama urged the Iranian dictator to step from power. He declared: "We have  consistently said that Ayatollah Khamenei must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way.  He has not led.  For the sake of the Iranian people, the time has come for the Iranian Supreme Leader to step aside." Obviously, this is a joke and Obama never made such speech. We just used his declaration about Syria and replaced Bashar Assad with Khamenei.

In fact, Obama refrained from supporting the Iranian uprising in 2009 and instead sought a "nuclear deal" with the Iranian dictator. While the Iranian demonstrators were chanting Obama's name and asked for support, Madame Clinton was dining with a group of selected "Iran experts" discussing the best way to reach a deal with Ahmadinejad.

And what did Obama get from negotiating with Tehran? Nothing

This is not new. The US policy toward Iran in the past thirty years has been plagued with naiveté.  For three decades, administration after administrations held the ill-conceived hope that someone will emerge from the gloom of tyranny in Tehran who will extend them the olive branch.  

But are the US government, think-tanks, intellectuals and policy makers so inept that they cannot even learn from their repeated mistakes?  Are the Iranian ayatollahs so shrewd that they have outsmarted us constantly for more than thirty years?  Truth be told, the answer to both of these questions is no. 

We should envisage another explanation: the American government, along with the American and the Iranian people are the victims of an incessant and relentless campaign of misinformation and manipulation by special interest groups.  This campaign has been so intense, focused and multifaceted, that has effectively parallelized the United State’s ability to formulate a sensible and sound policy toward Iran.  (See this report)

A good start to decipher this web of interest groups that successfully manipulate US policy toward Iran, would be to a look at Madame Clinton's list of invitees for her dinner we mentioned earlier. The same experts who advised her to reach a deal with Ahmadinejad and later changed the vest and claimed the leadership of the Green movement. (see this article)