So, we can’t force Iran out of its nuclear intentions, whatever they are. Pragmatism might prompt Iranian leaders to abandon their current course, but that seems unlikely at this point, as, internally, doing so would certainly be taken as a sign of weakness. Approaching Iran as an autonomous state — one with the same rights as ours (energy, weapons, and all) — is the only way to get beyond this impasse.

(TIME) | March 15, 2010
By Trita Parsi
Iran is the 21st century equivalent of 1930s Russia — a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Iranians haven’t stumbled upon this mystifying state coincidentally, and the enigma isn’t the result of outsiders’ failure to try to understand them. Rather, the Iranian government has a deliberate [...]

(The New York Times) | March 4, 2010
By Roger Cohen
PARIS — A year has passed since President Obama’s groundbreaking Nowruz offer to Iran of engagement based on mutual respect. Iran is now a different country, its divided regime weaker and confronted by the Green movement, the strongest expression of people power in the Middle East [...]

Channel 4 News (UK), January 22
Neda’s death ‘ignited an awakening’ in Iran

Neda Agha Soltan’s fiance, Caspian Makan: “The 23 January is Neda’s precious birthday. Neda will be 27 on that day. I felt that this should be marked in the world.
“I’ve asked the people of Iran, wherever they may be, in whichever corner of the [...]

(WashingtonTV)
Updated: Friday, November 20, 2009
Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf said on Thursday that US President Barack Obama should increase his public support for Iran’s democratic movement, and intensify sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
Makhmalbaf, who has become a spokesperson outside of Iran for the main opposition movement, said that the movement supports targeted economic sanctions [...]

Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:39am EST
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran must continue its struggle against the United States, a hardline cleric said on Friday a day after Washington renewed long-standing U.S. financial sanctions against Iran.
U.S. President Barack Obama offered a new approach toward Iran when he took office in January, but Iran remains locked in dispute [...]

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. wants a “civil, diplomatic relationship” with Iran and has told the regime that possessing a nuclear weapon isn’t in the nation’s best interests, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
President Barack Obama conveyed that message to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei, Clinton said in an [...]

By Andrew Lee Butters Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009
The three Americans arrested in July for illegally crossing the border into Iran could hardly have chosen a worse time to go hiking in the mountains of northern Iraq without a local guide. Though merely left-wing activists on an ill-conceived adventure, Shane Bauer (who is also a freelance [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama renewed some long-standing U.S. financial sanctions against Iran on Thursday, the White House said.
Obama notified Congress that, as expected, he was extending a set of existing U.S. measures against Tehran for another year, saying “our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal.”
Click here to read the full [...]

The following is a message from Barack Obama to Iran, on the 30th anniversary of the hostage crisis in which 52 Americans were held hostage in the American embassy in Tehran for 444 days:
“Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November [...]