we didn't help the situation by overthrowing their constitutional goverment when they threatened to nationalize the oil industry and imposed an autocratic tyrant instead
it's hard not to see a little bit of self-interestedness too in nuke-enabled countries like the usa and israel demanding that no one else be able to stand up to them in the most raw form of military power.
one of my earliest and best climbing partners is iranian, and he thinks his government is a bunch of mean clowns that need to go away, but he's a patriot too and would not take kindly to attacks on his homeland from the outside - the logic that we need to fear a nuke-equipped iran, even though we and our allies could destroy them many hundreds of times over regardless of how many they built, seems too reminscent of iraq and the weapons of mass distraction thing...
Agreed. But that kinda statement isn't as likely to rile anybody up now, is it?