From The Asia Times
By Ali Gharib

After 30 years of enmity closed off most lines of communication, the recent crisis in Iran has suddenly engendered a boom of American interest in the Islamic Republic.

But much of the attention in Washington and elsewhere in the US is often misplaced, misguided, or completely detached from the realities currently embroiling Iran in its most significant crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

United States diplomatic relations with the nascent Islamic Republic were severed after a hostage crisis, when a group of Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and held many of its occupants hostage for 444 days.

Since then, few significant steps have been taken towards repairing relations, and the remaining contacts between the US and Iran atrophied as US experts with firsthand knowledge of Iran grew older and their knowledge grew more obsolete.

“[The revolution] was 30 years ago,” said ambassador Nick Burns, a former State Department under secretary for political affairs in the George W Bush administration. “We have a whole generation of foreign service officers who didn’t learn Farsi.”

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