New Delhi, Jan. 29 -- In 2009, a young official from the US Department of State visited Tehran. At that time, Iran was in ferment. Ahmadinejad was the President of the Islamic nation-a principlist and conservative leader who viscerally hated the US and the West.

A myth has since been created around the impact of his presence on the protests. As the story goes, the White House cajoled Twitter to postpone its planned maintenance by a few days in order to stoke unrest. It is a different matter that the Iranians soon got a sense of what the Americans were up to and shut down the internet. This tough step taken by the Iranian authorities took the wind out of the protesters' sails, and the streets quietened down again.

Though no one today spe...