The US Department of State's AIE office plays a vital role in US public diplomacy through a culture of expansive mission. AIE’s exhibitions allow foreign citizens, many of whom might never travel to U.S., to personally experience the depth and breadth of US artistic heritage and values, so that a “footprint can be left where people have no opportunity to see American art.”

If Iran today has substantial soft power in the Middle East—as we believe it does—it has that power in no small part because it has picked winners rather than losers as its allies in key regional theaters.

Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum (BM), flew to Saudi Arabia, his first visit to the heart of the Islamic world...Mr MacGregor and Venetia Porter, the BM’s keeper of Islamic art, spoke to the chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities...

Now Iran is demonstrating "sympathy" with the Arab Spring and mistakenly calls it as an Arab version of the Iranian "Islamic revival." While Iran calls on all Arabs to support the Islamic brotherly relations, it supported a coup in Bahrain and a web of espionage in Kuwait.

Such fanfare went beyond the service of prosecuting a single crime. More likely, the charges being leveled at Iran came in the service of “public diplomacy,” an attempt to establish a broad narrative that serves a policy decision. Pushing the narrative of the Iranian “boogeyman” is not unusual in U.S. policy circles.

Sunday is going to open up a very interesting period in Saudi history because now, for the next four years, people are going to be debating in the press and in tweets and on Facebook how exactly this is going to work and how much power or freedom the women have to be campaigning just like men.