Pick up any daily paper, turn on any radio station, thumb through any news magazine, surf the Internet, listen to the speeches of John McCain, or read the press releases from the Bush White House, and you get the same message loud and clear:  Iran is aterrorist state that is getting close to nuclear capability and must be stopped at all costs.  Most critics also condemn Iran for not being democratic.

Let us remember just who created this present day terrorist state called Iran.  It was the United States who deposed their last democratically elected leader (Mohammed Mossadegh) and replaced him with the brutal Shah (Pahlavi of the Peacock Throne).  For what reason you may ask?  Oil my dear reader...oil!

During the reign of the brutal and secular Shah the United States exported blue jeans, coca cola, pornography and other such Western decadence.  What it didn't export was democracy, social justice and humanitarianism.  The Iranian people finally revolted and fell under the sway of the powerful and theocratic Mullahs.

After the Shah was finally overthrown, we helped Saddam Hussein strategically and militarily kill millions of Iranians in his 8 year war of aggression against Iran.  If Iranians hate us today and their current leadership calls us the Great Satan, it is not without reason and they appear justified in doing so.

If we want an improved relationship with Iran, if we want to eliminate it as a source of terrorism, we must once again earn the respect of the Iranian people.  This will not be done by axis of evil talk, by rattling the saber or by threatening them with nuclear surgical strikes, but by respectful diplomacy.