Of late, there has been progress in dealing with the Iran nuclear issue as indicated by the interim agreement of November 24, 2013 and the framework agreement last April 2.

Some positive changes have also taken place in U.S.-Iran bilateral relations as President Hassan Rouhani accepted Barack Obama's phone call before he left New York after his visit to UN assembly in 2013. Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif have met many times.

However, despite some evidence of détente, I would argue that disagreements and confrontation still dog U.S.-Iran relations and any cooperation is likely to be at low level.

Various factors work on U.S.-Iran relations, and one of the most critical should be U.S. domestic debate based on three widely different historical analogies.

There are U.S. scholars who see an analogy of Iran as Nazi Germany of the 1930s, namely, an aggressive country armed with extremist ideology and behaving in an irrational way. Former CIA Director James Woolsey argues the totalitarian regime that rules Iran today came to power in 1979 with substantial public support; its ideology is rooted in an extreme millenarian cult of Shiite Islam and resentment of recent historical events.

Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal has argued that the signing of the 2013 interim agreement was just like Munich, in this case sacrificing the interests of Israel while allowing time for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish lobbyists certainly take this view. During his known speech in the U.S. congress on March 3, Netanyahu brought up Nazi persecution to remind U.S. congressmen of the matching rise of Iran.

The second school connate Iran with the former Soviet Union -- an aggressive country governed by totalitarian ideology while behaving rationally. James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, for example, argue that Iran is a modern day theocracy pursuing revolutionary ideals while safeguarding its practical interests.

When Mohammad Khatami was elected President in 1997, many in the U.S. expected that he could be the Iran's Gorbachev, changing Iran's political system. And when the reformists lost their 2009 presidential election, Charles Krauthammer wrote on The Washington Post (June 26, 2009) that Hussein Musavi, the leader of the Green Movement, needed to behave like Boris Yeltsin, who administered the last blow to the Soviet system.

Then there comes the third analogy of Iran being like the China of the 1970s. That is to say, despite different ideology, Iran is a rational country sharing great interests with the U.S. Flynt Leverett and his wife Hilary Mann Leverett fall in this category. The latter sees Iran as being somewhat like China in the early 1970s.

Another is James Dobbins, the first special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan after Taliban was overthrown in 2001, who was satisfied with his interactions with Iran's representative, Mohammad Zarif, the current Iran foreign minister, in the Bonn process and later regretted the Bush administration was reluctant for further engagement.

Policy and actions are based on cognition or interpretation of information. So long as Iran is analogized as Nazi Germany, the only policy option will be destruction through military means; when Iran is regarded as like former Soviet Union, containment will be a natural choice. That is what Ray Takeyh argues. But Flynt Leverett, Hilary Mann Leverett, James Dobbins, and Vali Nasr of SAIS all propose to engage Iran.

Flynt Leverett advocates that the U.S. should realign with Iran. Vali Nasr argued the U.S. "should get Iran inside the tent" in an article published in The Washington Post of December 6, 2007.

Military destruction, containment and engagement were respectively carried in different U.S. presidency but with different proportion all through the years since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While Bill Clinton implemented a dual Middle East containments, in which Iran was one of the targets, his successor, George Bush Jnr., listed Iran second to Iraq as a target of destruction as one of the three "axes of evil."

President Obama falls into the third category. He has been the first U.S. president sending messages, and using the title the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2009. He had intended to meet with Hassan Rouhani in September 2013, but ended up phoning when Rouhani hesitated. He wants a negotiated resolution of Iran nuclear issue, and advocates removing sanctions on the country.

The China analogy currently is the only school winning ground within the context of the declining of U.S. power in the region; however, the other two schools show no sign of retreat. The Republicans together with some Democrats in the Congress are taking sides with Israel, for example.

John Kerry, judging by his staying in Lausanne for a whole week in March through April negotiating with Mohammad Zarif, might be very serious in getting a deal with Iran. However, he doesn't seem able to persuade Congress to remove the sanctions.

There's a long way to go.

The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

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