Hamid's Home Page with Bio and contact info

On Iraq instability: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Al Qaeda—all these different groups are preventing any kind of stability to emerge and to allow the state to develop the apparatus to solidify the institutions. That’s why they will bomb the police headquarters and the parliament. These are places that will give Iraq and institutional base. However, it is in the interest of Iran to stabilize Iraq, too, because a secure Iraq would for sure, be a Shia majority state that would be on good terms with Iran, because many of the leaders who are in charge in Iraq now were in Iran during their period of exile.

American policy: The senate has approved a bill in which they propose dividing up Iraq into three parts. It’s the peak of arrogance for another nation trying to determine the future fate of Iraqi people. I’m not saying this isn’t a good solution, but it needs to come from the grassroots level from the Iraqi population and the Iraqi leadership. These issues get translated into the Arab press as signs of Western colonialism. This is the fodder for people who want to promote an extremist mindset.

Will Iran attack? It has never been in the interest of the Iranians to adventure into another country. Not even Israel. They don’t want to give any excuse to any other parties to invade Iran.

President Ahmadinejad: He has no real power. He is a symbolic presidential leader. The highest authority in Iran is the religious leader, the Ayatollah.

On Nuclear technology: The Iranian people truly feel that it is their right to have nuclear technology and no outside power has the right to tell them they have the right what to do and what not do to. Even with stringent economic sanctions, the public will be more than happy to endure them. It has to do with the sense of national pride.

Will US Attack: We cannot solve all issues militarily. As we saw, it cannot be done with Iraq, no matter how many tanks we send over there. It will take a sense of congeniality. Any outside force would galvanize the public and unite them under the leadership, no matter what their differences are. A lot of the Iranian population in the US has said—if you go into Iran, it will ruin all of the previous relationships that have been built up to this point.