> What I find interesting is that Kerry's willingness to gamble that the future generation/future ruling class will be pro-American (or become pro-America because of this deal).

It definitely is interesting, but not entirely surprising. If you look at what Iran has endured at the hands of the US, yet look at westernisation within Iran, the significant pockets of western-leaning young people, and an Iran which is militarily structured to fight defensive wars, it looks like Iran's anti-US rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, a political coping mechanism to unify the country through hard times, but not intrinsically the soul of a culture that's thousands of years old, that anti-US rhetoric could, then, start to dissipate when said hard times and foreign pressure would end. And this diplomatic deal is the first step on exactly that path.

I mean, look at it from Iran's perspective, let's reverse it. It's a bit silly but bear with me.

Imagine the UK had some business conflict over oil in the US. Iran then helped overthrow Harry Truman, and installed a pro-iranian dictator who spread Iranian culture in the US, to improve this business relationship. That alone would be insane and ample fuel for anti-Iranian rhetoric for decades to come.

The dictator's rule (a pretty shitty one) went on for decades until he was overthrown and a new leader emerged in the US, directly followed by Iran funding Canada and arming it, which attacks the US and starts a bloody war of almost 8 years, all during our lifetime. When Canada appears to lose Iran backs it even more, and when Canada uses chemical weapons killing an equivalence of more than half a million Americans, both military and civilians, Iran tells Canada exactly where US soldiers are located, and was later found indeed having shipped chemical and biological weapons to Canada. And when a civilian US airplane flies above US territory and gets shot down by an Iranian cruiser, killing 290 innocent people, Iran never apologises and there are zero consequences, as if it never happened, to give you a sense of the relations.

When the war eventually ends, Iran invades various countries neighbouring the US, like Canada and Mexico, that just years earlier had been allies. Not just that but under false pretences, deemed an illegal invasion by the United Nations and abhorred by virtually the entire world population. (makes the US wonder, if Iran attacks a former ally, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands, tortures and a ruined, failed state, based on forged-evidence... there's perhaps only 1 thing that can deter Iran from attacking you. The ultimate deterrence, a Nuclear weapon, only ever used by Iran by the way, twice). Not just that but Iran keeps backing other countries like, China (read Saudi Arabia), who is a bit further away and who is a huge rival in the region. This is followed by Iranian politicians and media left and right calling to bomb the US, invade the country, hell even with a presidential nominee in Iran joking 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bom the US', referencing the Iranian Beach Boys classic Barbara US (this analogy is getting stretched pretttty thin by now, I know).

Followed by Iran leading the world into sanctioning the US (furthering existing sanctions that had been on the US for decades) which causes deep issues, and when someone from Iran finally wants a diplomatic solution, hawks in Iran invite the president of China over to give a speech about the US's danger to the world, a speech laden with lies contradicting China and Iran's own intelligence on the US.

But throughout all this, the US becomes more Iranian every day, anti-Iran hardliners in the US aren't representative of the larger country, the US doesn't invade or attack other countries and seeks diplomatic solutions, it structures its military to fight defensive, not offensive wars, and throughout it all Americans on the whole stay pretty sane and normal people.

It'd be no surprise then that someone in Kerry's position, Iran's state secretary, would think that easing up on all of the above could lead to a more pro-Iranian US. Now flip the whole story and it may make a lot of sense. Or you may have lost me in this silly comparison :) Of course it's a lot less black and white than this, but the notion that Iran's relationship with westernisation isn't zero (or close to zero) given their experiences with the west, sparks a lot of hope. And beyond that it's important to consider that while diplomacy isn't perfect, I can scarcely imagine the alternative, and haven't heard any sensible proposals either.