Well, to turn the clock back to the early 1950's...the USA has already de-stabilized Iran. They arranged to bring down a democratically elected government there through a CIA covert operation in 1951, and to replace it with absolute tyrranical rule by a monarch, the Shah of Iran.

The reason they brought down the elected government of Mossadegh was simple. Mossadegh had taken on a major British oil company (the forerunner of BP). He nationalized all Iranian petroleum assets. He did that on behalf of Iran and its people with enormous public support, but his action was not appreciated by the Corporatocracy, particularly in the UK.

Washington sent a CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy Roosevelt's grandson) to organize riots, demonstrations, and similar activities in Iran by the simple expedient of paying various people lots of US dollars to go out and raise hell. It worked. The government was brought down, the Shah was brought in, and Iran's oil remained under foreign corporate control which was what the exercise was all about. To hell with democracy, and to hell with Iranians and their future as a free and democratic nation under its own jurisdiction.

Everything that has happened since...the eventual overthrow of the Shah, the rise of the mullahs, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, and the enduring hostility between Iran and the USA goes straight back down the spiderweb of history to that covert CIA operation in 1951 which brought down a freely elected government and replaced it with an absolute monarchy (like in Kuwait or Saudia Arabia).

Iranians know that and remember it. Most Americans don't.

The fact that Iran now has an extreme fundamentalist society is the longterm result of American meddling in Iranian affairs over 50 years ago. The USA sowed the wind at that time. They did it to ensure the maintenance of corporate oil profits, not to protect freedom. Who will reap the whirlwind?

Read all about it in John Perkins' bestselling book: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".