The US-Iran relationship is one of the most important variables affecting the strategic environment for the Arabian Gulf region. Since the war to unseat Saddam Hussein, policy toward Iran has risen rapidly to a prominent place on America’s foreign policy agenda. On the Iranian side, the question of the Islamic Republic’s relations with the United States has become the most important foreign policy issue for Tehran and a central issue in Iran’s internal political drama.

The status and future course of US–Iran relations are also very much on the minds of people in the Arab states of the Gulf region. For all of these reasons, it is timely indeed to consider the factors shaping this very important bilateral relationship.