HOOMAN MAJD

A popular bumper sticker post-9/11, and pretty faded these days, proclaims drivers of the cars to be 'Proud to be an American.' It really should say 'Lucky to be an American,' for I doubt very much that the drivers had much say in having been born here, and are not old enough to have participated in the drafting of the Constitution.

I know that my cell phone in Iran... is bugged, and they listen in, and my emails, I'm sure, are monitored inside Iran. They have my email address; it's not like they can't snoop on it.

There's a lack of knowledge about Iran and the Iranian people.

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.

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally.

Foreign journalists have to have an approved interpreter assigned them, which they have to pay for, who also acts as guide. As an Iranian, even writing for foreign media, I've been mercifully unrestricted.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

This sounds like a cliche, but I always wanted to write. After college, I did some writing and realized very quickly that it's hard to make a living as a writer. At that point, I was more interested in fiction writing.

The wrong Democratic reaction to a stupid Republican utterance is to play hurt.

The city of Tehran is a very modern metropolis, and there's an emphasis in the Islamic republic on science and advancement and technology.

I got a couple of stories published, but the kind of money you were making for publishing a short story, I could see I wasn't going to make a living at it.

As a child, I was always very interested in music and had friends who were in the music business. I kind of accidentally fell into it and loved it. There was no reason not to - it was a great career.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age-less than a year old-and grew up and was educated in the West. I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it-at least culturally.

Turkey is viewed as a very modern country and a great place to go and visit and yet Islamic as well. Iran is in some ways like that... with the difference that Iran is probably more influential than Turkey in affairs that are of interest to us.

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.

It's a tradition in Islamic society to issue pardons at the end of Ramadan.

There has always been a confusion in the West about -Islam and about the Middle East and the assumption that the countries are Arab. Iranians very much object to that. They are very proud of their own history, but they have this real inferiority-superiority complex thing about the Arabs and the position of Islam in Iran. One of the reasons why Shi'a Islam is so entrenched in Iran is because it has allowed the Iranians to distinguish themselves from the Arabs, who are mostly Sunni.

It strikes me often while I am in Iran that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America. Replace Allah with God, Mohammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chastity, sin, salvation, and God's will, and a Christian Republic is born.

I think that the big issue people haven't talked about for the Iranians - and, obviously, for the Americans - is Iraq. Iran can be a tremendous help to the United States in Iraq. I don't think the Iranians have a particular preference for John McCain or Barack Obam - for them, it's the candidate who is willing to recognize that they are an important country that can have a serious effect on Middle East peace.

If you are an [American] politician it's very hard to imagine. "Now we are going to treat these guys as our equals? That's ridiculous. What have they ever done to deserve that?"

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.

I mean, we do believe in due process in America. I thought we did.

Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding.

Nima Shirazi's is an important progressive voice in the Iran debate in the West, often deconstructing the myths (and sometimes propaganda) we commonly encounter in the mainstream media. With succinct and elegant prose, and with no axe to grind, he exposes the hypocrisy of Western attitudes toward Iran.

The thing about Iran is there are many political factions and it's not quite the dictatorial, authoritarian state with one person always making every single decision.