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Iranian Quotes

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Iranian Quotes

“I was born in Tehran at a time when women's rights were deteriorating at a rampant rate. My parents didn't want to raise their daughter in a social, political, and religious climate that was growing increasingly oppressive toward women and girls, so they emigrated to London. But the struggle of the Iranian people was permanently etched in my social consciousness from a young age.”

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Author:Nazanin Boniadi
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“Social media is important, but it does not bring down governments. Governments can shut down the Internet. Governments can control media access. If they do what the Tunisians did and try and negotiate with the opposition, then the media's still open, the international community can learn what's happening in the country, and then that can provide inspiration. But in mid-2009, the Iranian regime just shut down the Internet. Facebook went dark. Twitter went dark. BBC Persian, Voice of America, Persian News Network all went dark. That was it.”

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Author:Ilan Berman
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“Now, the Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilization is a great civilization. Iran has acted in ways that's not conducive to peace and prosperity in the region: their threats against Israel; their pursuit of a nuclear weapon which could potentially set off an arms race in the region that would make everybody less safe; their support of terrorist organizations in the past - none of these things have been helpful.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“The condition of women in Islamic societies as a whole is far from desirable. However, we should acknowledge that there are differences. In certain countries, the conditions are much better and in others much worse. For example, the conditions women face even in Egypt differ a whole lot from what their Iranian counterparts deal with. The condition of women in Pakistan is far different from that in Saudi Arabia. This shows that you can have different interpretations of Islam.”

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Author:Shirin Ebadi
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“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.”

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Author:Hooman Majd
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“The Iranian government has become pretty open about the drug problem in recent years. Opium use is a very traditional, cultural thing in Iran, so the government is actually more open about it than they are about some of the other ills in society. They just don't want to talk about things that might relate to a Western lifestyle even though they know that Iranians indulge. Because there is no real public life left in Iran - people go and have dinner and then everything retreats behind these Persian walls.”

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Author:Hooman Majd
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“I can't speak for all Iranians, but I think that many of them would be uncomfortable with Ahmadinejad if Iran had nuclear weapons and he had his finger on the button. But the reality is that Iran's system of government is actually very complex. It has a lot of checks and balances, and neither Ahmadinejad nor any Iranian president would ever have his finger on the button. There are too many people involved in a decision of that magnitude.”

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Author:Hooman Majd
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“Our support for the Shah, the CIA coup in 1953 - has become infused into the Iranian political discourse. The regime that came to power in 1979 during the Iranian revolution actually defined itself as anti-American, and that's now a critical ingredient in the Iranian domestic political debate. That really is the source of our problems - the regime in Tehran continues to see itself as opposing the US. In their eyes, everything the US does is directed at them in a very malevolent way, and therefore they have to fight back against it.”

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Author:Kenneth M. Pollack
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“In the United States, Iran is nothing but a whipping-boy. Few Americans have any real use for Iran. Most of us, what we know and remember about Iran are things like the hostage crisis in 1980, or they think about the Iranian attacks in Lebanon, or on the Khobar Towers. So you don't get a whole lot of political mileage in the United States by going out and advocating better relations with the Iranians.”

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Author:Kenneth M. Pollack
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“The Europeans are starting to show that they're finally serious about the Iranian nuclear program, and they appear to be willing to use sticks against Iran. So I think it is imperative that the United States sit down with the Europeans and say, "Let's make this very clear to the Iranians. Either they can give up their nuclear program and their support for terrorism, in which case we'll given them all kinds of benefits. Otherwise, we'll join in comprehensive, multilateral sanctions that will cripple their very fragile economy."”

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Author:Kenneth M. Pollack
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“Most Iranians are sick and tired of revolutions. They've had one for the last 25 years, and they don't want another one. Those who've tried to spark another revolution have failed time and again. I don't think there's any evidence that somehow, if the U.S. gave these guys the high sign, it would make regime change somehow more likely. Every time the U.S. has tried to interfere in Iranian affairs to help a particular group of Iranians, it's backfired on us, and hurt the group we tried to help.”

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Author:Kenneth M. Pollack
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“More likely, there were probably some real divisions within the Iranian government - some groups wanted to ally with al Qaeda against us, others didn't want to have anything to do with that. So I think that debate resulted in no decision being made for awhile. The problem was they left the al-Qaeda folks in Iran in the hands of their intelligence services and Revolutionary Guard, who didn't really keep an eye on them - and may not have kept an eye on them on purpose.”

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Author:Kenneth M. Pollack
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“For three years now, probably more, there is a clear common interest developed between Israel and the leading Sunni moderate entities. The Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan. And the common interest is to block radical Muslim terror, to counter the Iranian hegemonic and nuclear intentions, and to join hands in a huge infrastructure project from water, energy, transportation, whatever, in the whole Middle East.”

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Author:Ehud Barak
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“The US have dealt with Iran. I'm not saying attack it; I'm saying we should have taken it seriously. The Iranian connection to 9/11 is much stronger than the Iraqi one ever was. That was the big lie: That Saddam had something to do with 9/11 - not the WMD - the connection between Saddam and bin Laden. We were spun on that and we were spun on the famous Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence, which was a complete lie. Both the CIA and the FBI came out and said that never happened.”

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Author:Robert Baer
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“It is clear that there are reasons for discontent in Iran - economic and political reasons. We have told the Iranian leadership repeatedly that the country's economic recovery can ultimately only succeed through greater international economic cooperation. And the precondition for that is not only that Iran refrain from developing nuclear weapons, but also that Iran's role in the region become far more peaceful. We have offered to finally hold true negotiations and talks on that issue.”

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Author:Sigmar Gabriel
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“I call on the Iranian people: it is not too late to replace the corrupt regime and return to your glorious Persian heritage, a heritage of culture and values and not of bombs and missiles... How can a nation allow a regime to instill fear, take away the people's freedom and shock the young generation that seeks its way out of the dictatorial Iran.”

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Author:Shimon Peres
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“And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.”

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Book:What we carry: poems
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“One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.”

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Author:James Buchan
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“Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.”

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Author:Noam Chomsky
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“...the prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein...devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology.... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti...repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering.”

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Author:Toby Lester
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