After the start of the imposed war, dozens of times—now, if we actually count it, it might be more than that, like thousands of times, but now it's difficult to count those large figures—we witnessed divine assistance; we saw God’s help. One of these was the return of war captives. We had about fifty thousand war prisoners in Iraq; fifty thousand! We also had nearly the same number of captives- a bit less- in Iran. However, the difference was that the captives we held were all military, whereas, many of those Iranians who were held in Iraq were ordinary civilians. They had arrested some people in the deserts.
When the war ended, it seemed to me that taking these captives away from Saddam would probably take thirty years; thirty years! Because we had seen captives swaps in other wars. In the World War, the Japanese war for instance, after twenty or thirty years had passed, one party would still claim that they had a few captives held by the other party; the other party would deny; they went through so many negotiations until they finally came to a conclusion. Hundreds of meetings must be organized to prove that a certain number of captives are still imprisoned, and then they would be released at a very low pace: one every now and then. Saddam Hussein was like that; a rigid, stern, mean and vicious person: whenever he felt strong, he would have to show off; he had such a personality; Saddam was of a very low and materialistic nature. The people of low and materialistic nature, indulge so much in their superficial power that they can no longer be dealt with. When they feel weak, however, and they face a stronger person, they become extremely meek! You have witnessed this! Saddam pleaded with the Americans. Before the Americans invaded Iraq—on the last time—he begged the Americans to compromise with him; he proposed that they unite against the Islamic Republic. However, he was not lucky, and the Americans did not accept.
I thought that it would take thirty years for the prisoners to be freed. The Almighty God created a scene, and this idiot [Saddam] decided to attack Kuwait. He felt that if he wanted to fight against Kuwait—of course, his war with Kuwait was intended to win complete domination over Kuwait—he needed to be secure on the side of Iran; which was not possible with the Iranian captives he held imprisoned. First, he penned a letter to the Iranian president of that time, and also, to me, because he didn’t get an answer from his first letter. Then, he started to free the captives on his own; some people may remember that very well. We suddenly learned that the captives were coming from the border. They all returned, group after group until the last one came back. This was God's action; it was divine assistance. And we have seen many similar cases till today.
Meeting with members of the Leadership Office and Revolutionary Guards Corps of Wali Amr
July 27, 2009
