This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

He had undoubtedly not availed himself of the ministry archives, archives that might have revealed to him that Iranian diplomats in Paris, from this, his own Foreign Ministry, had taken it upon themselves to issue Iranian passports to Jews escaping the very Holocaust they were aware of, but that he now denied.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

Iran is a huge country and much, much more sophisticated than most people imagine... It certainly has the potential to be at least the way Turkey is to most Americans.

If you are an [American] politician it's very hard to imagine. "Now we are going to treat these guys as our equals? That's ridiculous. What have they ever done to deserve that?"

The thing about Iran is there are many political factions and it's not quite the dictatorial, authoritarian state with one person always making every single decision.

I think there is an American attitude that is very hard to break which is "We're great. Who wouldn't want to be like us? Who wouldn't want to have the benefits of our largesse, handing out aid and having American companies based in their countries?" and "our culture is great," and all that. It's hard for us to imagine ourselves as not being the greatest country on earth.