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Starting off originally named Persia, the country was changed to Iran in 1935. Iran is the second oldest country in the world and the most important single state in the middle east. It has been one of the world's most powerful states in past history, and is rich in resources such as fossil fuels, carbon-based energy, petroleum, and natural gas. It is actually the 3rd largest petroleum reserves. The shah of Iran attempted to reassert Iranian domain in the world through a policy of westernization of Shiite Iran in which the Americans supported. Iran used its petroleum wealth in return for considerable technical support and military help from the United States by Keeping a promise to make sure oil kept flowing at acceptable prices working up into the 1970s. Thinking it was a good idea, it actually ended in a "seething hatred" among other Iranians.
Iranians believe they are the premier civilization of the region and should be accorded the status of a major regional places in the international politics of their part of the world. They feel entitled to respect.

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The United States is currently the most powerful and consequential state in the world. It is also one of the two oldest continuous political democracies in the world. The United States has involved itself in Iran's backyard with major combat operations in countries bordering Iran on the west (Iraq) and the east (Afghanistan) during most of the 2000s and is serving as the major obstacle to the spread of Iranian influence in the small, oil-rick, largely Sunni countries along the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The United States still has biased feelings towards Iranians because of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-1981, and the fall of the shah causing them to be in favor of a harsh foreign policy stance with Iranians (crisis lasted 444 days televised in the United States daily with an American blindfolded and a banner of how many days its lasted). "Iran's regime is the farthest thing from a rational state that the United States has confronted since Nazi Germany".

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Neither country formally recognized the other until the middle of the nineteenth century and their history of significant relations only began as part of Allied efforts to deny Middle Eastern oil resources to the Germans in World War II. The relationship between the two since this was has been "intimate but schizophrenic". During the period between the end of World War II and 1979, the United States was the prime partner of the Iranian regime of Shah Reza Pahlevi (the king). While being their closes ally Iran received considerable American assistance in the White Revolution and had its military supplied with the finest first-line American equipment and the Shah's military acted as a surrogate for American power in the region as a result ensuring there was no threat to the flow of petroleum west. Harsh rule involving foreign policy caused a lot of opposition and placed them at odds with one another. The present issue of American-Iranian relations is the question of Iranian possession of nuclear weapons, the United States keeping the peace between Israel and Iran, and the policy of Iran and it's violent conflicts.

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The likely antagonist for Iran in nuclear terms is nuclear-armed Israel. Israel has threatened to attack and try to destroy or damage the "program" Iran has been working on to produce/supply themselves with nuclear weapons in a short amount of time. The United States is basically just trying to keep the peace between them both by discouraging Iranian weapons development and Israeli military action in an international atmosphere of restrained ability to influence events of domestic suspicion on both sides about its intentions and will to impose terms of settlement.

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The world would indeed likely be a simpler, more tranquil place if the United States and Iran could simply leave one another alone, but that's impossible this day in age. Countries who began as close friends are now demonizing one another. The American preference is for Iran to "shuck" what the United States considered the sectarian tyranny of theocratic rule in Iran because it presumes that this is what Iranians also want and that a more democratic Iran would be friendlier to the United States. For many Iranians the United States is both the symbol of the hated shah, and destruction of Iran's only experience with real democracy. Although currently the regime faces opposition and great economic difficulties, its hold on power doesn't appear to be in danger.