On a clear day, from a vantage point half way up the Alboroz mountains, you can see the uncontrolled sprawl of Teheran stretching out to the horizon in the distance. Teheran is a city of expectance and illusion, where all at once the preconceptions of the Islamic Republic of Iran are proven and abolished, without the slightest hint of irony. It is also a city with an earthquake coming like Christmas and an American bomb coming like a run away train heading down hill. Either one will crumble the city's white washed houses into sand, killing men, women and children as they sleep. But only one will crack the thin wall of support for the West that has slowly built up since the dreams of the revolution were replaced by a draconian sharia law and a religious elite, who have been stuffing themselves since they came to power.

It is at the foothills of the mountains, in the rich suburbs of northern Teheran that this wall is at its strongest. In Valiasr, one of Tehran's richest and most liberal districts, Iranians are keen for western visitors to see their new shopping malls, which are filled with the latest fashions from the designer labels of London and Paris. The black chador, an all encompassing tent like cloak, that all women were forced to wear, following the revolution in 1979, is non-existent among the young who walk the streets here. Instead the girls, who must spend hours delicately applying their makeup each morning, wear brightly coloured head scarves set as far back as possible, so that their hair is almost fully exposed. Their clothes are bright too and those who wear the black manteau, a baggy trench coat and trousers that is an excepted variation on the chador, cut it to accentuate every curve of their body.

It was here that I met Arman, a soft-spoken 23 year old with striking deep green eyes and a penchant for all things western and free. "My family and I, we support the Americans coming here to free us", he said at the end of a long day in which I had been treated like a royal guest by his family who had met me for the first time that morning. "Do you think they will come?" "I don't know," I said. "But if they come your family or your friends might be killed." Arman turned to his mother who had come to help me hail a motorbike taxi to take me back to my hotel. They talked quietly planning their response like a team on a quiz show, occasionally glancing over at me with inquisitive glares. "Yes, we don't want to be killed. Just bombing the leaders," they said. "You are ok you have your freedom it is better where you are from."

Arman shook my hand and I smiled at his mother knowing that it is forbidden for me to touch her hand in public. But as I turned to leave she thrust her hand out towards me and when I took it she shook mine with proud vigour.

There is an ambivalent air between Iranians and Americans. They are said to be like old lovers who split up decades ago but have looked longingly at each other from a distance ever since. But since the revolution and the subsequent hostage crises where 400 Revolutionary guards burst into the American embassy, holding 52 hostages for 444 days before their release, Iran has been enemy number one.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice said in a speech last month. "We do not have a problem with the Iranian people. We want the Iranian people to be free. Our problem is with the Iranian regime." If that sounds familiar you are not alone. Shaking his head in New York, where he was attending a United Nations Security Council meeting on Iran's nuclear programme Russia's Foreign Minister described the situation as looking "so déjà vu."

For the British and American governments Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were something of a convenience when it came to public relations, they were also a red herring. Secret government documents leaked to the press last year revealed the government knew almost a year before the invasion that the threat from Saddam was "thin." It was known his "WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran" and in America "intelligence and facts were being fixed around policy," of regime change. The pressing question now is whether or not the public are being fed another red herring.

Today in Iran there is no evidence the Iranians are trying to build a nuclear bomb. It is signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear programme, which Iran maintains is for civilian use only, is entirely legal. But the allegations are not unfounded as Iran kept parts of its programme secret for 18 years before it was discovered in 2003. It is this secrecy that has led to legitimate concerns that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

In July 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency announced after new inspections that it found no proof of a weapons programme. The IAEA has been monitoring Iran ever since and in February 2005 its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, reiterated that his team had found no evidence that Iran was secretly working towards building a nuclear bomb. But America have shifted the goal posts saying Iran should stop all nuclear research. The problem is that any country with the ability of producing nuclear fuel has the potential ability to convert it to a weapons grade level. From an Iranian point of view the American position is unreasonably aggressive. The supreme leader Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa - a formal religious order - against nuclear weapons and the recently elected President Ahmadinejad denounced such arms at his inauguration speech. He also said: "We too demand that the Middle East be free of nuclear weapons; not only in the Middle east but the whole world should be free of nuclear weapons."

It is within this context that a head on rush by the Americans to pressurise Iran whilst threatening military action if it does not respond, raises questions as to their motivation. Especially as recent developments in India, Pakistan and America itself have shown that non-proliferation is low on the agenda for the Bush administration. These days other motivations are talked about mainly by people who are branded conspiracy theorists. They must long for the good old days of British imperialism when Middle East policy was so much more honest. Back in Teheran I took a taxi to the American Embassy, now home to the Revolutionary Guard, My translator, Hamoon the endlessly gracious host and guide laughed as he spoke to the taxi driver. "I told him you are British and he said it's the first time he has had a father of the revolution in his car," he said. "It is just for laughing, you know? We all Iranians call the British the father of the revolution. You are to blame for the state we are in now." Well if the British are the father then the Americans are the surrogate mother who temporarily adopted Iran.

In August 1953 the American government with British encouragement ordered the CIA to carry out a coup in Iran. Two years before this, Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran, had nationalised the oil industry and offered the British, who ran the Anglo Iranian Oil Corporation compensation for their loss. The British government were furious with Mossadegh. In their eyes Iranian oil belonged to Britain and they approached the Americans with a plan to overthrow Mossadegh. Within two months of the order to go the coup was carried out successfully and Mohammad Reza Shah, the King, was installed as an American puppet. Iran's oil was soon privatised again but this time it was split 40 percent British 40 percent American and 20 percent Iranian. Over the next 25 years the Shah monopolised power for himself running the country as a dictatorship. The Americans with help from the British created and trained SAVAK, the Shah's brutal secret police. They also helped to start Iran's nuclear programme, which continues today. By 1975 Amnesty International found that Iran had the 'highest rate of death penalties in the world, and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record on human rights than Iran.' It was this terror along with the absolute corruption of the Shah's regime that led directly to the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

The Shah was seen as the lynch-pin of US security interests in the Gulf and it was a great shock when he was overthrown. The new leader, Ayatollah Khomenei's, bitter antagonism to the US meant that Iran became a direct threat to American interest in the region. "These were, and are, centred on the Gulf region's immense oil reserves", Professor Paul Rogers, a global security consultant for the Oxford Research Group and expert on Middle Eastern conflicts, said. "If the oil factor was important at the start of the 1990s, it is far more so 15 years later, with US oil import dependency increasing year by year.

"In such circumstances it is fundamentally unacceptable to the United States for a "rogue" state such as Iran to be allowed to get even remotely near having its own nuclear capability. Such a "deterrent" would greatly limit US options in the region." American policy is now switching from a concern about nuclear weapons to regime change. Recent reports suggest the Bush regime believes bombing Iran will cause the Mullahs to loose their grip on the country and a popular revolution will take place. In fact the very opposite is likely to happen. The irony is that an attack on Iran will leave the Iranian government scrambling to build a nuclear bomb for their defence. And those like Arman who hate the regime and love the American way of life, are likely to learn to hate the American way of death and rally behind their leaders.