In Ted's Words
I (had) begun shooting certain elements in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah just before this latest cycle of violence broke out. I met with their principal military leader in the south. I wanted to go and talk to the people who run Hezbollah because Hezbollah and Iran are very, very close. And in the event of a confrontation between the United States and Iran, one of the battle fronts clearly was going to be southern Lebanon and Israel. I just didn't realize it was going to happen within a week or two of my being there.

I think there are a whole bunch of revolutionary guys waiting for me [in Iran]. They've been waiting for 27 years and they can't wait for me to get to Tehran. I went to Iran the first time in 1974, when the Shah was still in power. I was a diplomatic correspondent for ABC News in those days and I went with Henry Kissinger, and he was acutely embarrassed by the fact that his diplomatic correspondents who were accompanying him were giving the Shah all kinds of hell for human rights violations that were being committed by his secret police.

I must say, as I look back now on these last 27 years and on the degree of violations of human rights that have occurred over those 27 years, you know, certainly U.S. interests would have been better served if the Shah was still there, and I'm not sure that Iranian interests might not have been better served. But that's one of the reasons that I very much want to go back, to see for myself.