Hussein Khomeini

After the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Hossein relocated to the holy city of Karbala.[3] During the same year he visited United States and, in a historic meeting, was received by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi II, son of the last Shah of Iran.[6]

After his quick visit to America, he returned to Iraq for several months, then suddenly departed for his native Iran after receiving an urgent message from his grandmother, asking him to come back. According to Michael Ledeen, who has quoted "family sources," he was blackmailed into returning.[7] During a stay in Washington, he met with famed author and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, according to whom he received Hitchens' Quran, kissed it and added to it the references he considered canonical in disapproving of the Islamic republic's legitimacy. He also met Hitchens in Qom in 2005. In Christopher Hitchens Arguably, page 455, their meeting is described in “Iran’s Waiting Game” which features in (page 466) “Vanity Fair,July 2005.” In his memoir, Hitch-22, Hitchens praised Khomeini as a "courageous foe of his grandfather's theocracy".[8][9]

In 2006, he broke "a three-year silence" when he called for American destruction of the Islamic Republic by invasion on the Al-Arabiya television station, saying 'freedom must come to Iran in any possible way, whether through internal or external developments. If you were a prisoner, what would you do? I want someone to break the prison [open]'.[4] This position was even more extreme than that of the fiercely anti-regime Iranian exiles, "who oppose military action while urging the US to back a domestic uprising."[4]

Since returning to Iran, he has been closely monitored by the Iranian government and has been restricted in granting interviews to the Western media,[6] but is thought to "be protected from retribution by his grandmother, Khadijeh Saqafi" (d. 2009).[4]