June 19th, 2015 
(THE CLARION PROJECT) — Iran’s leaders are “theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal, imperial liars,” according to former head of the CIA James Woolsey.
Speaking on a conference call organized by the Clarion Project, Woolsey said he would rather deal with the Soviets he met across the negotiating table decades ago than talk to Tehran.
“They weren’t theocratic fanatics,” he said of his Soviet interlocutors.
Listen to Woolsey’s comments.
Woolsey now chairs the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which not only looks at Tehran’s nuclear program but also its human-rights record.
“Iran is hanging political dissidents every day,” he told reporters and an international audience. “The problem is not the Iranian people,” he said.
He urged Western powers to encourage average Iranians to “stand up to their ‘masters’,” and believes with external support Iranians could succeed where their attempted revolution failed in 2009.