I meant that people will take anything that gives them a lift, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or the consciousness-expanding drugs or opiates. In Iran, until recently, they sold opium in shops legally, and they had 3,000,000 addicts in a population of 15,000,000. I don't believe that all those people were escaping from "complexes" or anything of the sort. They were simply exposed to it.
The ultimate goal is to change Syria's behaviour on a variety of issues - on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.
As long as copyright is breached in Iran and international works are being freely published in magazines and newspapers, no one feels any need for Iranian works.
Everything we've done has been designed to make sure that we address that number one priority. That's what the sanctions regime was all about. That's how we were able to mobilize the international community, including some folks that we are not particularly close to, to abide by these sanctions. That's how these crippling sanctions came about, was because we [USA] were able to gain global consensus that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a problem for everybody.
One morning, just like 911, there's going to be a disaster. I have yet to see the United Nations do anything effective with either Iran or North Korea.
Americans coming home, an Iran that has rolled back its nuclear program and accepted unprecedented monitoring of the program -these things are a reminder of what we can achieve when we lead with strength and with wisdom, with courage and resolve and patience. America can do and has done big things when we work together.
With the world's unprecedented inspections and access to Iran's program, we'll know if Iran ever tries to break out.
I think that all countries of the region should join their efforts in the fight against a common threat - terrorism in general and ISIS in particular. It concerns Iran as well, it concerns Saudi Arabia (although the two countries do not get along very well, ISIS threatens both of them), it concerns Jordan, it concerns Turkey (in spite of certain problems regarding the Kurdish issue), and, in my opinion, everybody is interested in resolving the situation. Our task is to join these efforts to fight against a common enemy.
When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.
There are some issues that are not in control of the government. Two of those issues are human rights and personal freedoms are in the domain of Iran's conservative judicial system.
I hope to come back to Iran again if it pleases Allah; I hope to be your guest again, and I hope that Allah will bless me to speak at Salat al-Jumu'ah. I pray for our success and the success of all good thinking righteous people who want to see a world come into existence that is better than the world that we inherited.
[Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia] are here because they could offer very essential and important help, because the situation that we are facing now is not only about a few terrorists from within Syria; it's like international war against Syria.
Even if you look at Iran, those campaigners for human rights there, they don't want to have anything to do with America, because they are afraid that having American support will be the kiss of death for their movement. And that's really tragic.
The other thing is going to be me being able to show not just the American people or the Israeli people but the world that, in fact, we have mechanisms in place that will prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
I'm very pleased we got that nuclear agreement. It puts a lid on the nuclear weapons program. We have to enforce it, there have to be consequences attached to it. But that is not our only problem with Iran.
It is essential for America to understand what our mission is in Iran, and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means.
We need to make it very clear - whether it's Russia, China, Iran or anybody else - the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information.
I think that it was - Benjamin Netanyahu almost couldn`t help the Iran deal, but John Boehner sort of walked him into it as well.
One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.
A lot of Iran's empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq.