Tehran believes it's none of our business or anybody else's to decide the future of personalities in other countries.

I think we are making an assumption that that is the outcome of the negotiations. I think President Assad will be prepared to accept whatever the outcome of the intra-Syrian dialogue and the decision of the Syrian people is. But people are trying to decide and determine the outcome of the negotiation before even we agree to start the negotiations.

You cannot have security at the expense of the insecurity of others.

The Persian Gulf is our lifeline ... We will respect international navigation, for us, freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf is a must.

Nobody thinks identically on Syria. But we share the same view with Russia that the future of the personalities in Syria will be determined by the people of Syria and not by people outside Syria.

People have been fed misinformation. The fact is that the fighting that is going on on the ground in Syria is with Al Qaeda, with Jabhat al Nusra, with Daesh. The pockets, small pockets, of other groups are usually surrounded by these various extremist groups. . . . Once they stop fighting, there is nothing for the Syrian government to hit other than the terrorist organizations.

You know where the people who killed people in San Bernardino came from. You know where people who did 9/11 came from. You know where the people who did Paris came from, where they transited, where they went. None of them even set foot in Iran. So why are you punishing people who are visiting Iran for that? . . . We're not going to radicalize them. We never have. Your allies have radicalized people who visited.