As long as Iran's aggressive policies continue, it's going to be bad for the region. Iran has to decide whether it wants a revolution or a nation-state.
We can certainly be on the same side and the same front with the workers and with the oppressed people of Iran. We can certainly be on the same front with them.
Over more than a decade, Iran had moved ahead with its nuclear program. And before the deal, it had installed nearly 20,000 centrifuges that could enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb.
There's no way to resolve Syria without Iran being involved, given its financing of Assad and the fact that Hezbollah is probably the most effective fighting force that Assad can count on.
Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term.
Essentially, Iran was sanctioned because of what had happened at Fordow, its unwillingness to comply with previous U.N. security resolutions about their nuclear program, and as part of the package of sanctions that was slapped on them, the issue of arms and ballistic missiles were included.
We did not treat the Americans badly. They left Iran in a relaxed mood. The embassy was active here after the revolution. We didn't have any problem with them. They started it.
I'm blown away. I'm flabbergasted the president [Barack Obama] made the phone call to Rouhani after 30-plus, `79, 33 years or so. And there's a reason we haven't negotiated with Iran, because they're state-sponsored terrorists. They're the central bank for terrorism around the world.
Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market. It is not clear what they have bought, how many secondhand materials they have bought. I am very worried that something like Chernobyl will happen to Iran.
Americans coming home, an Iran that has rolled back its nuclear program and accepted unprecedented monitoring of the program -these things are a reminder of what we can achieve when we lead with strength and with wisdom, with courage and resolve and patience. America can do and has done big things when we work together.
In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.
The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public. In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information.