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?"

There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

It's a tradition in Islamic society to issue pardons at the end of Ramadan.

Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding.

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.

An interesting thing about the religious people who run Iran is that one of their problems with Ahmadinejad, who they thought would be one of their guys because he's so religious, is that he actually has some really nutty ideas about religion. He's too religious. He's too literal. I mean, there are plenty of people in Iran who like Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs, just as there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists in America who like George W. Bush's beliefs. But there are also plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with his overt religiosity.