So you would think again with reagan being in hollywood as an actor and john kennedy going to hollywood all the time to hang out with the stars jack kennedy once went to hollywood after world war ii and spent a month there living with broad robert staff trying to figure out what gave movie stars charisma so he could mimic that. He went to gary cooper said in huge said this guy is the most job dropping warring person ive ever met that we go outside of the restaurant and he is mobbed. I dont get it. They were also the two most popular speakers in america in the 1950s. Kennedy had made a big splash running for president and got hundreds of speaking invitations every week and reagan gave more speeches. He was the official corporate spokesperson for General Electric and later death valley days and his job was to tour the country giving speeches on electric appliances. He did that thousands of times. He estimated he gave a speech eight or 9000 times. And yet they kept crossing the country and never met so its a very strange situation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. [applause] would the like to sign some books . We but love to. If you would like a book signed come on up and we will do well by roe. The books are right there. The registers are by the orange sign. They wont take them back. [laughter] robin wright talk about her book in the name of god the khomeini decade. The book examines the khamenei society the rise in the power of the Ayatollah Khamenei and his transformation from a strategic prowestern monarchy to an isolated bureaucracy. This is about an hour. Cspan robin wright, author of the book in the name of god the khomeini decade, how much influence do you think the iran relationship with this country has had on this country in the last 10 years . Guest oh, i think its had not only an Immediate Impact of the trauma of the hostage ordeal the impact of the confrontation between the us and iran in the persian gulf, the shooting down of the iranian aircraft i think its had a much broader impact, and that is it, along with vietnam, proved that the United States was not invincible; was, indeed, very vulnerable, and that third world powers could not only stand up to us and defy us, but occasionally could even defeat us. And so i think its had an impact on our National Psyche and on our policymaking apparatus. Cspan did they laugh at us behind the scenes over there . Guest no. I think theyve always been a little bit frightened of us. Theyve always given us credit for having more power and more planning, more conspiracies than we deserve. I think that they were proud and pleased that they were able to stand up to us, but i dont think they were laughing at us. Cspan why did you write this book . Guest i wrote it because of my own experience in the middle east. I lived in beirut for years as a correspondent for the sunday times of london, and during that period i witnessed the marine bombing in 1983, when 241 American Military personnel were killed, the two embassy bombings. Two of my very best friends are hostages, including terry anderson, who had the office next door. And it was my own sense of rage and misunderstanding of the situation. I wanted to find out why this was happening to the United States, why there was this tremendous antagonism between two countries that had been such good friends, and so i kept going back to iran. Id first been there during the shahs era in 1973, and i kept going back and back and back, and finally i came to grips with why it was happening, what it meant and answered some of my own questions. I dont have any sympathy for the revolution, but i certainly understand now. Cspan whens the last date in this book that you were able to write about . Guest khomeinis death. He died the weekend i was writing the last chapter. I may be the only american grateful to khomeini for anything, because it was going to be subtitled the khomeini era. And so i got in the complete time of his rule in iran. Cspan why the name in the name of god . Guest because thats the basis, the justification, for everything iran has done over this decade, carried out in the name of god, be it acts of violence against the United States, the war with iraq, the taking of hostages. Both domestic and Foreign Policy were shaped around gods laws and carried out in gods name. Cspan did you ever meet khomeini . Guest no, i didnt. I met several members of his family and talked to them at great length, and they offered some unusual insight, but in the last years of his life, khomeini was never interviewed. It was the first period that when he got back, when noriana falachi and various other people who were there at the time got to see him. Cspan who in his family did you meet . Guest i met his son, ahmed, who is a very powerful man in his own right now. I met his daughter, who has some very interesting kind of family type stories about what it was like growing up in the khomeini household how she would fight with her brother and how khomeini would settle arguments like a normal father, which is not the way we picture him in the west, thats for sure. Another daughter, some grandchildren. Cspan what were they like . Guest well, theyre human beings, just like the rest of us. I dont agree with a lot of the things they said, but it was fascinating, as i said, to get some exposure to someone. Its like being within the inner circle of the pope or muammar qadhafi. I mean, good or bad, the closer you get, the more you understand them. And thats, i think, one of the great things about being a journalist. We can go, often, places like iran or libya where american Foreign Policymakers cant, american diplomats cant, and so we have access and we can begin to understand and, hopefully transmit that at least to some of our readers. Cspan did you ever live in teheran . Guest no. I went there quite often, stayed there for long periods of time, but never lived there. Cspan what if somebody told you you had to live in iran for the rest of your life . What would your reaction be . Guest there are places id rather live many places. Cspan whats good about it . Guest well, iran is a what is good about iran . I guess what concerns me most is the stereotypes that are wrong, and, for example, that khomeini tried to take the revolution back to the seventh century, at the time the faith was founded by the prophet mohammed. In fact, there are many attempts to modernize. Theyve kept on many of the modernization products started by the shah building a subway system in teheran, building new new development projects. I think that their focus, their hatred was channeled against the west. It was the westernization that was synonymous with modernization that so turned them off. And there are still many sides of life where iranians are approachable. Theyre open life for women is better in iran than it is in many of the gulf sheikdoms with which we have good relations. There are women in parliament; there are women in the ministries; 51 percent of Teheran University a year ago was accounted for by women students. So its not what is good or bad about iran; its a different culture, and its. I think, unfortunately, one of the problems in the west is that we tend to look at things if theyre like us, theyre good, and if theyre not like us, theyre bad. And i found things that were comfortable for me, as a westerner, and things that were unusual. Cspan what was comfortable . Guest what was comfortable . Well, i think the accessibility after all, its an interdependent world now, and even a country thats going through a xenophobic revolution, turning away the outside world, still is open to people who will listen. And a lot of iranians were willing to talk i was always surprised be they hard liners or the so called pragmatists. And with each trip i got to see more and more high level people, including the head of the revolutionary guards, who admitted that they had trained the man who drove into the marine compound, where i had lost friends. It was almost a surreal experience. I talked to the interior minister, the stalin of the revolution, as hes called, a man named motishimi, who talked about his links in the establishment of the hezbollah, or party of god, cells in lebanon while he was ambassador to damascus. I mean, its not as closed off as one might appear. They still know a great deal about us. They get the Washington Post and the New York Times in their libraries and their think tanks their newspapers, in both english and farsi, run a lot of news about the United States, not all negative, either i mean, the straight Wire Service Stories from the associated press. The tragedy is that we dont know as much about them. There are still 10,000 iranian students who come to the United States for education, but we. Cspan every year . Guest every well, its gone down, in fact. It was much higher in the early 80s. They had Foreign Exchange problems and so forth, that limited the number of foreign students they could afford to send overseas. Cspan why do we allow that . Guest oh, i think that we hope that exposure to our culture will help defuse some of the tension of the past decade. Cspan can americans go over there and study if they want to . Guest no, and one of the tragedies is that even just a year ago there was not a single Foreign Service officer learning farsi. I mean, we have so isolated cut ourselves off from iran that theres no one who really has now the exposure, the experience in trying to understand it, so that if we do get to the point that we try to better relations with iran because the revolutions not going to go away we dont really have the skills, the background knowledge, with which to do it. Cspan we have no ambassador there. Guest oh, no. We have interest section run through the swiss. In washington, dc, they have an interest section, too, with 90 iranians in it. We would have the right, if we wanted to, to have americans working in a Foreign Embassy the swiss, the belgians, some ally if we so chose, but the fact is no one, after the hostage crisis of november 1979, is going to risk the possible dangers of another hostage crisis. Cspan when was the last time you were there . Guest just about a year ago. Cspan why did you go . Guest i went twice last year, once because of the shooting down of the iranian aircraft and once because of the end of the war. Cspan the iraq war. Guest the iran iraq war, which lasted for eight grisly years. Cspan you write that when you do travel, you wear the veil. Guest all women born or iranian have to wear either the chador, the all enveloping black veil that covers everything but the face, the hands and the feet, or hajab head scarf and very loose clothing does not reveal any curves. Cspan and do you have to go into the country that way, so you dress that way before you leave wherever your demarcation point is . Guest it depends on which airline you fly. If you fly in iran air, yes. If you fly in a foreign aircraft carrier, you can dress at the last moment. And there are other little things. I mean, you know, you have to be very careful no makeup. I once had my red nail polish on, had forgotten to take it off and the stewardess reminded me, and of course, i had no nail polish remover in except in my luggage, and so they gave me 10 band aids to put on the ends of my fingers. And i went through customs, and pulling out my money to declare the immigration, and, of course, everything went flying and the immigration official leaned over and said, are you badly injured . And i laughed and pulled off one of my band aids and showed him, and he laughed. I mean, there is an undercurrent of understanding. These days you can wear pink nail polish. My last trip, i managed to wear pink, and i was not reprimanded things are loosening up now. I think the passing of the khomeini era, the threshold marked by his death, means more flexibility not a dramatic change, but far greater flexibility in economic matters and commerce with the west, as well as diplomacy. I think were going to see a rocky but eventually steady course toward bettering relations with the outside world. Last will be the United States and it will be probably a long way down the road, but i think were headed in that direction, finally. Cspan when you travel to iran, where how do you get there . Guest there are not many carrier airlines that still fly to teheran, so usually i go through frankfurt. Its the one. West germany has very strong trading relations, as does japan, with iran, and so i usually go through. But its amazing the airlines are always booked and there are no super savers, and it can be one of the most expensive places to visit in the world. And teheran, in fact, is one of the three most expensive cities in the world. Cspan for people who live there or for foreigners who travel there . Guest both. And one of the things about the economy thats so troubling the regime and troubling for the average iranian is that the legal rate of exchange for the dollar is 20 times its legal value, so that a little box of cookies that would cost 8 if you were paying in dollars would cost 160 if youre paying in rials, and the average iranian cant afford that. Its still a third world country, and despite its oil the per capita income, is fairly low. And a taxi to rent a taxi for a day just an ordinary old car with an iranian driver will cost you 250 to t 300 a day. Two tires can cost a University Professor two months salary. Its a tremendously expensive place to live. Cspan when you go there, where do you stay . Guest i stay at the old intercontinental or the old hilton, which have been renamed one is called the independence, which symbolized what the iranian revolution was all about, and the other one is called the tulip, which is the symbol of martyrdom. Cspan what language do you speak . Guest french, english. I know 50 words of 50 languages, including 50 words of farsi, but ive never had a language problem. Cspan one of the things that you keep reading through your book is that no matter how hard we try, we cant understand these people. They tell us that; you tell us that. And you tell a story in, i think, the prologue about having a drink or a cup of tea or something with someone in a small cafe. Guest yeah. Cspan would you tell us that story as an example of the difficulty in understanding them . Guest well, this was a Civil Servant who had been a longtime contact, and we were having melon juice and coffee cake one afternoon, and he was telling me how disillusioned he was about the regime, that if his son became of age and the war was still raging, he would get him out of the country; that he hadnt voted in the last president ial or parliamentary elections, didnt even know who was running; that he was very discontent at every level and wished that they were back in the shahs day, not because of the shah but because of the way of life during that period. And then a friend called him away and told him that radio israel and the bbc were reporting that khomeini was dead. It was erroneous. It was one of the many false reports before khomeini did die, and he came back ashen faced and told me the news, and then he said, this is terrible for my country. Cspan what did he mean . Guest i think he meant that for all the bad things that were happening in iran, there were many iranians, he and others who, though discontent, believed that khomeini had irans best interest in mind, that he may misstep, but he was one who was powerful enough to stand up to the outside world, and his death would mark a time that the nation would be left feeling more vulnerable. Cspan and when you visit iran and you dont speak fluent farsi, how do you make contact and talk to people do they speak english . Guest oh, theres a lot of english, a lot of french. This is a very cosmopolitan country, and up until the revolution, i mean, everyone was in and out of iran, and the funny thing is even the old Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises on the downtown corners of teheran have changed their signs. They now say, try our very own fried chicken, and they have the picture of someone who looks very muslim, rather than colonel sanders. But you go inside and the owner will tell you, sure enough, they still use the same old recipe, and it smells just like Kentucky Fried Chicken. They have been exposed. Iranians, particularly those whove lived in the cities and a vast majority of them do now have such a sophisticated knowledge of the outside world and have always had to because of trade and commerce. Iran has been the strategic juncture between east and west, the crossroads. And so there, speaking three or four languages is not unusual at all. Cspan do you get a sense, when you visit with the people, that they all follow this leadership right now . They all believe in whats happening in their country . Guest no, i dont. I think there are are believers on two levels. One are those who are in the minority now, i suspect, who believe that the revolution is still very much alive, still very strong, and they believe everything rafsanjani says or everything, particularly, that khomeini said. I think theres another level. Iranians have always been strong nationalists and they need strong leadership, and when they get that kind of leadership, they are attracted to it. They may moan and groan and grumble all the time, but at the end of the day, they worry about the alternatives or someone weak or succumbing to the west. Even those who admire america, were educated here, had some pride at the time of the revolution, that a third world country could stand up to a superpower and get away with it and one of their goals during this first decade, despite the immense costs of the war and so forth, included paying off the foreign debt accumulated by the shah that amounted to billions of dollars, despite the fact they didnt really have the foreign reserves to do it. They needed to buy military equipment. They needed it for development and so forth. But they felt that was a means of freeing themselves from outside influence, from being beholden to others, and they proudly point out that they were doing this at the same time the United States was becoming the worlds greatest debtor nation. Cspan youve got here a map that i want the audience to see how much of this country have you seen . Guest a great deal of it. Over the years i did a lot of the kind of kind of standard things one