I am certainly tired of spending American blood and treasure to liberate those who seemingly don't want it - is this one of those cases? Part of me wants to just shut the door and take a rest - let the rest of the world sort out their own problems.
I'm afraid I don't know enough about Iran to know how close the government and the people really are. I see lots of hatred and vituperation from the government, but I see a different picture occasionally. You mentioned the Bam 2003 earthquake relief and the reaction to it - that's one example.
I don't watch TV, so my sense may be skewed, but we (U.S. public) don't see anything but a superficial examination of anything. And that's the fault of our citizenry as much as anything else - we don't demand it much, and what we do get is fleeting. (But we're all over the latest Tiger Woods / Michael Jackson / Trig Palin tidbit).
The first thing we have to do is to feel like a country again. It's debatable whether acting like one leads to feeling like one, or the other way round, but it's got to happen before we can credibly influence anything anywhere else. Oh sure, we can throw money at it (for a while) or throw troops at it (for a while) but unless it comes from a country that believes in itself, it's not worth as much as it might be.
Rhetorically, we could do a lot more. Instead of spending all this bloviation about health care and CO2 and manufactured crisis-of-the-month stuff, there should be somebody, somewhere, talking about Iran and what's going on today, and where the situation stands. Whether a protest occurred today or not.
Still, the question remains, what DO we do? what exactly IS "enough"?
As I tried to indicate earlier, we can't lay down a single path forward and walk it through. We're going to have to feel our way along.
At this point there is little we or our country can do but to lodge protests against what is going on there. The most we can do autonomously is to support the radio and television broadcasts into Iran -- not cut support for them, as I have heard in recent years. We need to let the people know that we know what is going on, and that we are watching (and waiting) in support.
Think Reagan and those ruled by the Soviets.