Iva Leila

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran.

It did not work.

I was born in the midst of a revolution.

That was where I should have grown up, essentially.

My parents liked waiting for me to get my passport and to be big enough to go on a plane.

And then we left and we moved to England.

So then I was always interested in trying to find out more about this.

Like, what is this country that in my other parallel life, like I would have grown up there and lived there?

Iran's struggle for economic independence.

And it has a subtitle, which I don't remember.

It's reform and counter reform in the post-revolutionary era, potentially.

Economics seems like it's not political.

Of course, it is inherently extremely political, but it was easy to go and say, oh, I'm just trying to understand all of these imperialist exploiters, how you've navigated that and protected them.

Iran from further exploitation.

And it wasn't a lie because I am interested in that as well.

She gets permission.

A lot of it, the older newspapers were not digitized.

So initially it was literally looking at huge books.

Then it was just turning the pages and taking notes and just reading.