It's probably more frustrating to me as an Iranian living in America than it is when I'm over there. Inside Iran, people are actually quite well educated about America. There are things they don't understand, particularly in the government, but the people, by and large, know the American sensibility quite well, and the reverse is not true. There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

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

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.

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.

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.

I know that my cell phone in Iran... is bugged, and they listen in, and my emails, I'm sure, are monitored inside Iran. They have my email address; it's not like they can't snoop on it.

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?"