One basic obstacle for the new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program that open today will be America’s basic distrust of the Iranian regime. Before striking any deal with Tehran, the Obama Administration will have to gauge whether a country where hostility toward the U.S. has been a core political theme since 1979 is acting in good faith.

President Barack Obama has decided to test whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “charm offensive” is a legitimate effort to reach an agreement on a more constricted and transparent Iranian nuclear program. With this decision, he embarks on the most transformative and important diplomatic initiative of his presidency.

When Iran's President Hassan Rohani came home from his charm offensive in New York last month, he arrived bearing a "special gift" from the United States. But any resulting goodwill may be short-lived, with art experts now saying the 2,700-year-old Persian artifact that was returned to the Iranian people is a fake.

The leader of Tehran's Jewish community has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to take advantage of the "unrepeatable" opportunity to repair relations with Iran, AFP reported on Monday. "If the U.S. and the international community do not make the best of this golden and perhaps unrepeatable opportunity, then it will be in the benefit of those who are against the normalization of ties between Iran and the U.S.," wrote Homayoun Sameyah, according to AFP, in an open letter addressed to Obama.

According to most media observers, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's recent trip to the United States, and his phone conversation with President Barack Obama, went as well as could be expected. The New York Times called Rouhani "blunt and charming," and the BBC heralded a "new tone" to his remarks.

While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tries to ease friction with the United States, chants of "death to America" on Friday may deepen doubts in the West that Tehran is ready for a deal as talks on its nuclear program resume next week. Rouhani's resounding June election victory gave him a popular mandate to reverse Iran's confrontational foreign policy and attempt to win relief from international sanctions imposed over concerns Iran may be seeking a nuclear weapons capability.

In his first-ever interview last week with the BBC Persian Service, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inadvertently elicited a combination of outrage and ridicule with an offhand comment about the aspirations of Iran's population. Responding to a question about the prospects for change under Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, Netanyahu dismissed Rouhani and the election that elevated him as incompatible with the true preferences of the Iranian people, if they could be freely expressed.

At a recent reception in Orange County, Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA/39th) and Manoucher “Fred” Ameri spoke to OCTV’s Executive Producer Alex Bolourchi about the U.S. Cyrus Cylinder Tour and human rights. On loan from the British Museum, the Cyrus Cylinder has been on display since March 2013 in five major museum venues throughout the United States. The cylinder exhibition is currently being displayed at its final stop at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles portion of the tour is sponsored by the Farhang Foundation.