I VIVIDLY recall one of my first visits to Iran. It was just weeks before the 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq and having failed to gain access to Baghdad as Saddam Hussein’s regime prepared for war, I found myself flying to Tehran and travelling overland across the border from Iran into northern Iraq.

It was while on the frontier checkpoint that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) pulled a colleague and myself aside for searching and questioning as to the purpose of our journey.

On rummaging through our equipment they came across our satellite telephones, indispensible for reporters in a country like Iraq that was just about to go to war and where ordinary communications were sure to be brought down.

As far as the IRGC were concerned my colleague’s phone was acceptable. My own however, the IRGC guards duly told me, was a US-manufactured Motorola of a type used by the US military and therefore I might be a spy.

After a few anxious hours’ detention it was all sorted out and my correspondent’s credentials accepted, but I’ll never forget the near paranoia of those Iranian IRGC men and their obsessive preoccupation with “American spies”.

The whole issue of US “spies”, skulduggery and interference has once again reared its head again this week in Iran, as the country faces the largest street protests since the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

As might be expected Iran wasted no time in pointing an accusing finger at “grotesque” US interference in its internal affairs, making its complaint in a letter to the UN. On one level, of course, this is an entirely predictable response from Tehran.

For those among the country’s political conservatives and the IRGC who so often do their bidding, it’s always much easier to blame malevolent outsiders than recognise the desire that clearly exists for change among so many of Iran’s citizens.

That said, Iranian envoy Gholamali Khoshroo in his letter to the UN is completely right to point out that Washington has a track record of intervening – usually negatively – in Iranian affairs.

Long before Donald Trump was sticking his own oafish oar in this week with a series of tweets praising the Iranian demonstrators’ “fight”, a shadowy and powerful political lobby in the US has been pulling out all the stops to do what it can to scupper Iran.

Far and away among the most powerful congressional bodies in the US today are the hawkish groups on Iran policy. Of these there is no shortage, just as the funding they receive similarly seems plentiful.

According to an investigation done by the US magazine The Nation, tax figures from four years ago, before Iran really became the burning political issue it is right now, showed that just two of these lobbying groups, the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD) and American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had a combined budget of approximately $75 million.

Add to this the annual budget of an AIPAC offshoot, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy ($8.7 million), and aggressive right-wing PR groups like United Against Nuclear Iran ($1.6 million), and you get some idea of how much neo-conservatives in the US and their allies are investing in trying to gain influence and push for regime change in Iran.

A number of key players have been instrumental in this process, among them Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the FDD who has called for confronting Iran the “Reagan way” by adopting a US national security directive that would “systemically dismantle Iranian power”.

Then there is the man they call the “Dark Prince” or “Ayatollah Mike”, Michael D’Andrea, the man running the CIA’s Iran operations. Himself a convert to Islam, Mr D’Andrea’s appointment was one of the first signs that the Trump administration is invoking the hard line the US President took against Iran during his election campaign.

Mr Trump has been bringing together other allies too in his toughening position on Iran. What else do Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu have in common but a shared fear and loathing of the regime in Tehran?

Remember all the cosying up in Riyadh just before the end of last year? And don’t forget the reported talks between Saudi and Israeli intelligence officials, despite the fallout and ongoing controversy over Mr Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel created in the Arab and Islamic world.

All three leaders, American, Israeli and Saudi it seems are more than willing to bury the hatchet provided it lands squarely in Tehran’s back.

Which brings me back to the past week’s protests in Iran. Not for a moment am I suggesting they’re entirely the result of outside meddling and mischief making. For a long time now there has been a desire among Iranians for change.

In a country where almost half the population is under 35 years of age and where making ends meet often poses an enormous challenge, the conservative clerics and hard core elements of the IRGC know that long term the writing is probably on the wall and that shifts in power will ultimately prevail.

But the latest protests come as another decision looms for the Trump administration on January 15 on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.

Let’s not forget that in October, Mr Trump gave Congress and America’s European partners three months in which to strengthen provisions in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), before deciding whether he would sign the waiver that would continue the freeze on US sanctions.

As the deadline on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal looms, only the most naive would assume that the timing of the protests in the country are a coincidence.

All those years ago when I visited Iran on the eve of the war in Iraq, it was the endgame in a conflict that brought down Saddam Hussein and sent the region into a spiral of violence still felt today.

It was also a war that in great part was nurtured and lobbied for by a hawkish US neo-conservative think-tank ominously called the Project for the New American Century. (PNAC). I can’t help feeling a certain sense of deja vu right now when it comes to Iran.