In recent days, the blogosphere and the international press have been abuzz over the public relations campaign undertaken by Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Tweets by accounts associated with both men — caveat: the president has not explicitly confirmed his —can be credited with nudging Iran’s public posture on Syria in a more moderate direction, and distancing the new Rouhani administration from the anti-Semitic trope of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has confirmed reports of President Hassan Rowhani's well-wishes on Jewish new year on social networking platform Twitter on Thursday. CNN's Christiane Amanpour posted a message on Facebook stating that she had just spoken to the Iranian foreign minister who confirmed to her Rowhani' tweets. “Just spoke with Iran's foreign minister who confirms he IS tweeting and wishes Jews in Iran & around the world a happy new year!,” Amanpour wrote in a tweet.

A series of tweets by Iranian leaders over the past couple of days has students of diplomatic semantics — a sometimes exact science — wondering whether a mere greeting is an opening to the country’s adversaries. Both Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and the new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, sent Rosh Hashanah greetings via Twitter to Jews celebrating the new year.

Part of President Barack Obama's argument for a military strike against Syria is a threat to broader U.S. security concerns in the Middle East and Asia. Secretary of State John Kerry says acting against Syria's use of chemical weapons matters far beyond its borders. "It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attacks, will now feel emboldened, in the absence of action, to obtain nuclear weapons," he said.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs,posted a short piece with six questions about Syria on his Facebook page. 1,100 comments left on the Minister's post until Saturday,30th of August. Some called Zarif on the hypocrisy of criticizing Western intervention as intervention, when Iran has its own presence on the ground.

As an American military strike looms over Syria, Iran is weighing its decades-long alliance with Syria against its own pledges to reengage with the US and the West over its nuclear program and other issues. Tehran's combative rhetoric may appear to have changed little: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei likened a Syria strike to a spark to gunpowder, “whose dimensions and consequences are unknown.” And Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari has predicted Syria could become America’s “second Vietnam.”

On Monday, Google became one of the first American companies to take advantage of newly loosened U.S. sanctions against Iran. With a Google Plus post, the search giant announced that it was offering its Play store to Iranian citizens, allowing them to download free apps from its app marketplace. The Treasury Department, which sets the export restrictions, issued the new rules back in May. But the recent easing is actually part of a longer process that doesn’t just change U.S.

Syria warned the United States against any military action over a suspected chemical weapons attack in its civil war, saying it would "create a ball of fire that will inflame the Middle East". President Bashar al-Assad's closest ally Iran also said Washington should not cross the "red line" on Syria, where doctors accused his forces of a poison gas attack that killed hundreds last week.