Hawzah News Agency (Tehran, Iran) – Here are some excerpts from Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks on Howard Fast’s book:

All media outlets should take heed of red lines that are not allowed to be crossed, by anyone. Not that we wouldn't allow them [to be crossed], everywhere in the world there are redlines which must be respected. This is also observed in the, so-called, democratic counties. Look at the United States when there was a Leftist current—not anymore now--under what conditions did American Leftists, including Communist or socialist groups, and their communities live!? Read some of the literature written by leftist authors--books by Howard Fast--some of which have been translated into Farsi. I have read them—and see what shocking facts are brought about--depicting conditions under which Leftists lived in the US.

Read the famous novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck or his other works—which I cannot recall, right now. Analyze what he has written about the conditions, under which the 'Lefties' lived in, and how heads from the so-called 'center of democracy' treated them. Read it, in order to realize that the 'center of democracy', the idol for those who pursue such a deplorable style of writing in Iran, could not even tolerate the Lefties, because they believed that Marxism would question the capitalist system in the United States.

Well, if they tolerated the Lefties it would have meant they agreed with them crossing redlines. If today a movement arises that chanted the slogan, "The U.S. should divide”, or that the "U.S. should divide into 49 states,” how would they be treated? If today someone rises up and proposes, that since there are about 40 or 50 million African Americans living in the United States, they should have their own country; give them a piece of the U.S. so they can establish their own government. How would the U.S. government react? Would they not do what they did to Branch Davidians and burn them all in a building?

May 02, 1996