Asia Times: Iran to US: 'It's a culture thing', by Shahir Shahidsaless

It is a no-brainer that the conflicts and tensions in the region, from Afghanistan to Lebanon, could not be resolved without close collaboration between the US and Iran. However, given that the Americans' push for spreading Western values seems an inseparable characteristic of its culture while the Iranian government and its conservative supporters interpret this cultural infiltration as nothing but a plot to softly topple the regime, how could such collaboration ever be shaped?

Although never discussed explicitly, this is one of the main - if not the main - obstacles that divides the two sides and makes peace difficult to attain. The question remains how the US in the President Barack Obama era can conceive assurances to alleviate the Iranian government's concerns that not only hard but soft toppling is also off the table.