"A person is smart, a people are dumb" that's pretty much my thought on Iranians and a lot of cultures. On an individual level where you can take people one at a time my opinions are mixed as you'd expect. As a culture, like most middle eastern countries en-masse Iran is full of xenophobes intent on destroying/conquering/converting pretty much everyone not them. When they aren't going off on Isreal and the US, they are going off on other Muslims.
Even on an individual level my attitudes tend to be fairly negative, as they tend to be about those who are noticibly Islamic or especially of direct middle eastern descent and having immigrated to the US within a few generations. Exceptions always exist, but understand that when I worked casino security I was effectively involved in suerveillance and investigations, when 9/11 happened there was a shift from our focus on Asian gangs to Middle Eastern terrorists, and I even had to take classes and training for it, got my little anti-terrorism expert certificate and everything. Like most things involving the casino it's a giant dog and pony show, we didn't catch many terrorists but in following these people around and keeping an eye on them when they didn't think they were being watched the bottom line generally comes down to them being some of the worst kinds of people. See unless we caught someone actively doing something violent to the casino or planning terrorist attacks or whatever it's a non-factor, but when your watching guys whoop and cheer over the deaths of Americans and talking the kind of smack these guys were, it generally shows why the terrorists act, while it might not be public when people are watching, the bottom line is the majority of them support this crap even if they aren't actively involved in it. Of course there is no crime in any of that, free speech and all of that, but like many such observations it has tainted my perspective.
When you've done a decade or so of the kind of work I did (which was mostly boring where nothing happened, casino security is mostly a joke) it gives you a perspective on things that a normal person doesn't have, simply because your seeing what people are really like when they don't think anyone is around. Where I worked it was on an Indian Reservation, and there was no assumpsion of privacy as they post right as you come in that your potentially under suerveillance as soon as you enter the parking lot. There isn't any of this warrent for wiretapping garbage, and you have multiple departments which all overlap to some extent (despite intent) security (me), actual suerviellance (focused on the gaming floor though), and the investigation (arguably passes the buck to other departments), then you've got tribal gaming commission, state gaming comission, liquor agents, tribal police (sometimes), on-site state police, and god knows who else and despite everyone watching each other as much as anything else and trying to remain seperate everyone talks and gets involved in a incestuous gang-bang that paints some pretty interesting pictures if you pay attention since you've pretty much got a bunch of people with lowered inhibations combined with suerveillance powers that would have made Hoover wet himself in envy.
This is one of the reasons why I tend to be so anti-politically correct. I long ago came to the assumpsion that unless your in a position to actually gather and assimilate this kind of information you can't make any statements about reality, what differant groups do, what they think as a whole, and what kinds of policies need to be set.
Back before I took criminal justice (with an eye towards forensics), and long before financial realities forced me to stop school, and medical realities forced me to "retire" on social security, they used to refer to the changes in people who do this kind of thing as putting on a pair of "colored glasses" you can't ever take off. Seeing the things ordinary people don't makes you forever differant, and better informed, than they ever will be, and you can't ever stop seeing things this way even if you want to... and oddly they aren't thankful for it, since society, especially US society bases desicians on large-scale ignorance.
It's important to understand there are always exceptions, but the general rule is typically not very nice, and at the end of the day you begin to realize most people really don't even know the people they THINK they know all that well.
I'm not going to argue or discuss this, and I've said it before, but basically... my opinion of Iranians as a whole is not positive, same for most Middle Easterners and Islamics. There ARE exception though of course. People won't agree with my explanation for my general sentiments, but then again you don't have to, as it's mine.
