Hello. Hello, hello.

I thank you so much for being with me.

Of course, thanks.

This is ABC's Somay-Malecian.

She's a producer based in London, but she only moved there recently.

You lived in Iran for most of your life, right?

When did you leave?

Yes, I lived in Iran most of my life.

I left Iran so far for good about six years ago.

For years, she worked for ABC out of Tehran.

And like 90 million of her fellow citizens, she was constantly under the watchful eye of the country's supreme leader.

Now, I mean that literally, his face was on murals, posters, picture frames, and offices and homes.

His face was omn murals, posters, picture frames, and offices and homes. His face was omnipresent.

For 37 years, more than 37 years, Khomeini has been in charge of almost everything that happens, both in domestic and international policymaking of the country.

Iran was not always like this. In the middle of the last century, it was common to see Iranians in the street as they would be anywhere else. College students going to class, men and women

casually hanging out, wearing whatever they wanted. There was no mandatory hijab. The country was on the path of progress.

That changed with the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Eventually, Ruhola Khomeini became the country's first Ayatollah.

A decade later came his successor, Hamini.

News, there would be some kind of announcement about a new government came after yet another day of running confrontations in the center of Tehran.

The outcome of his leaderships for the majority of Iranian population, for 90 million Iranians, has been nothing but restrictions, poverty, policing media, policing the closing of women.

This is a theocracy that has hung dissidents, that has banned women from much of public life,

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