Answer to History

Since my departure from Teheran in January 1979, Washington had not been enthusiastic about my coming to the United States. But the Americans had always made one thing clear: I would always have access to the United States for medical treatment and assistance should my safety be threatened. These assurances had last been repeated by the American ambassador to the Bahamas when that government, under what I believe to have been British pressure, refused extend my tourist visa. By then I no longer wanted to live in the United States. I am not a man to go where I am not wanted. But I was entitled to educate my children in America and to have access to the superior achievements of American medicine. In power, I believed that my alliance with the West was based on strength, loyalty and mutual trust. Perhaps that trust had been misguided.