We've had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system? Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.
The regime kept saying that all of my opponents are lackeys of the United States. We used to say that this is all lie, that we are lackeys of the United States.
I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions. The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it. In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire). When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act.
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.
Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?Of course, everyone knows that I'm also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The difference between us and the other side is that they use populist and...kind of slogans that are...they fool the people. They are the kind of dishonest and populist slogans that we are not willing to use.
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.
We have two kinds of oppression. Oppression that is universal - everyone in Iran is subject to it. But everyone has also their own, unique way of experiencing this oppression.
Khomeini obviously had many problems, but he had one clever side to him. He never made economic promises to people and as a result, he never led to dissatisfaction in this perspective. Because they need to get votes, they use misleading slogans. And this leads to rising expectations. I had a personal experience.
There's all kind of evidence that there is enormous corruption in the distribution of that money. For example, they gave about $100 to $150 dollars to each of the teachers. They gave about $500 dollars to those who were getting married. Through this process, they obviously collected a lot of votes, but these monies could not solve the structural problems that these people face. But the only result, the only consequence, was that a big sum from the budget was wasted this way.
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.