Current U.S. - Iranian Relations?

[PastTense]

I was just reading a thread about the U.S. not allowing the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. to enter the U.S.

Is the US wrong to ban the Iranian UN ambassador from entering the USA?

This quite surprised me as the last I recall about U.S. - Iranian relations was that Iran had elected a new President who was not an extremist religious fanatic, but instead someone who was trying to improve relations with the West and who was trying to negotiate an end to the embargo.

What happened?

[John_Mace]

Politics. There are midterm elections coming up, and the Democrats don’t want to be seen as “soft on terrorism” when there is no chance they can win back the House and a good chance they will lose the Senate.

And Republicans are ready to bait them at any chance they get.

[Little_Nemo]

@John_Mace

Politics. There are midterm elections coming up, and the Democrats don’t want to be seen as “soft on terrorism” when there is no chance they can win back the House and a good chance they will lose the Senate.

And Republicans are ready to bait them at any chance they get.

Or it could be Iranian domestic politics. The Iranian government might have intentionally sent a representative they knew would provoke an American response to show their own domestic critics that they hadn’t “gone soft” on America.

[Erdosain]

There are a couple huge points you are missing.

1. The US and Iran do not have formal diplomatic relations. We don’t exchange ambassadors and we don’t have an embassy. We are furiously negotiating on the nuclear issue, but both sides are really fundamentally opposed to each other.

2. The president of Iran is a figurehead with little or no real power. It’s an encouraging sign of where Iranian public sentiment is that they elected the most moderate candidate, but that’s as far as it goes. The Ayatollah and the ruling council of clerics hold all the power.

[Ravenman]

Point 2 above should be clarified: the Iranian president has no power on foreign affairs matters, unless the Supreme Leader directs him to carry out a certain policy. It is the unelected Supreme Leader who makes the call on whether Iran will negotiate with the US, who the envoys are, etc. The president simply has no power in those matters.

[Erdosain]

@Ravenman

Point 2 above should be clarified: the Iranian president has no power on foreign affairs matters, unless the Supreme Leader directs him to carry out a certain policy. It is the unelected Supreme Leader who makes the call on whether Iran will negotiate with the US, who the envoys are, etc. The president simply has no power in those matters.

That’s a good clarification. Plus, I should add that it may be that the President has real internal domestic powers (I’m not familiar enough with internal Iranian politics to say), but what is certain is that he simply doesn’t have any say with regards to foreign policy, nuclear issues, and military matters.

[John_Mace]

@Little_Nemo

Or it could be Iranian domestic politics. The Iranian government might have intentionally sent a representative they knew would provoke an American response to show their own domestic critics that they hadn’t “gone soft” on America.

True. From the OP, I gathered he was more interested in the US angle, but Iran is certainly not an innocent party in this little flap. And there isn’t any way anyone can force the US to change its position the matter.