As the Obama administration's engagement strategy with Iran hits a brick wall, the White House faces a ticklish decision: whether U.S. President Barack Obama should send greetings to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on March 21.
Last year, Obama used the holiday -- a celebration of the vernal equinox that Iranians have observed since ancient times -- to seek "the promise of a new beginning" with a country that has bedeviled U.S. policymakers for three decades. He reached out to the Iranian people and, in a departure from Bush-era nomenclature, to the leaders of the "Islamic Republic of Iran," thus implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of the Iranian government and suggesting that the United States was not pursuing a policy of regime change.
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