We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don't see EU reporting on it.
I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran? But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.
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.
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.
The other thing is going to be me being able to show not just the American people or the Israeli people but the world that, in fact, we have mechanisms in place that will prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
The number of the opposition has certainly increased [in Iran]. There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.
Of course we [with Angela Merkel] discussed our commitment to meeting shared security challenges from countering cyber threats to ensuring that Iran continues to live up to the terms of the Iran nuclear deal.
If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely... Our patience is not unlimited.
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.
Today, as a result of a miraculous set of circumstances, Iran is going to get between $50 to $55 billion in oil revenue, which is unheard of in the history of the revolution.
Everything we've done has been designed to make sure that we address that number one priority. That's what the sanctions regime was all about. That's how we were able to mobilize the international community, including some folks that we are not particularly close to, to abide by these sanctions. That's how these crippling sanctions came about, was because we [USA] were able to gain global consensus that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a problem for everybody.
The biggest problems with Iran in the region are not due to the size of their resources, but due to the fact that they've been more effective in supporting proxies and stirring up dissension and conflict in the region than America or our allies have been in stopping those activities.
Supporters of the national front, Mosaddeq, believe that in Iran, we don't have a nationalities problem, we don't have an ethnic problem. It is like living with your wife, with whom you are in love and you are intensely involved in, but you also have tensions. And their position is that they want to deny that these tensions exist.