From Democracy Digest:

Anti-Americanism lies at the core of the Islamic Republic’s state ideology, which casts Iran as the defender of Muslims against an expansionist, imperial United States, says Wang Xiyue, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Princeton University, who was imprisoned in Iran from August 7, 2016, to December 7, 2019. Iran has no interest in reconciling or normalizing relations with the United States, because doing so would invalidate the revolutionary regime’s raison d’être, he writes for Foreign Affairs:

At a more practical and opportunistic level, the rhetoric about the threat and menace of an unrelenting foreign foe justifies the regime’s domestic repression and its efforts to expand its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond. The need to maintain hostility against the United States, regardless of the U.S. policy orientation toward Iran, is widely acknowledged among Iranian officials. RTWT

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