We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.

Why did the regime put me in prison in the first place? I was put in prison for six years and it has been all illegal.

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.

You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.

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.

We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.

If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist...the entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.