“On that day when the United States of America will praise us, we should mourn,” said Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. His words so captured the uncompromising anti-American ideology here that they were painted like a billboard across the old US Embassy wall in Tehran, standing for years as a message of defiance to the West. Today the quote is gone, recently painted over as if to signify a softening of Iran’s hard-line rhetoric. But as President Obama spells out his wish to engage with Iran, is the Islamic Republic – which marks its 30th anniversary next week – really ready to set aside decades of official hatred for the “Great Satan”?
