Iran Re-Visited
I just came back to the United States after a three-week trip to Iran. I led two civilian diplomacy delegations during those three weeks. The first one was a delegation of three CodePink leaders, small in number but important in substance.
Being with the two co-founders of Code Pink and another key member was a wonderful and unique experience. I learned a lot — and expended much energy! They are passionate about the need for peace and tireless in their pursuit of that goal.
The CodePink members who traveled with me were Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin, and Colonel Ann Wright, all of whom are very experienced international travelers. Ann is a wonderful woman who spent many years in different countries as a U.S. diplomat, which has led her to different political perspectives and many layers to her work. Medea and Jodie, who co-founded CodePink in 2002, are visionary, incredibly creative in their work style, and full of energy.
Although this was a CodePink delegation, and each of these women have traveled widely, they decided to arrange this trip to Iran through FOR. The success of our delegations, in gaining access to different groups and community leaders in the country, was an incentive for this special collaboration. We discussed the mission and vision of each of our organizations — there are aspects that are consistent (e.g., ourcommon commitments to preventing war, promoting nonviolence, pursuing civilian/citizen diplomacy, and advocating for justice), and ways we are different (for instance, the tactics we use). So it is understandably difficult to match the two organizations’ visions, but we tried and succeeded to a great degree. (For more information, please check CodePink’s weblog as well as FOR’s Iran weblog.)
The second delegation, which I co-led along with Mark Johnson, the executive director of FOR, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, was more of a "regular" FOR civilian diplomacy delegation.
We had 14 members in our delegation, ten from the Jewish community, including two rabbis. This was the first time, to the knowledge of FOR’s staff, that the majority of participants of a delegation to any part of the Middle East were of Jewish faith. (FOR-sponsored peace delegations have traveled to Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, among other countries.) This delegation was also special because five members were under 30 years of age, which gave this group a wonderfully young spirit.
The primary focus of this delegation was interfaith dialogue, and we were able to follow that goal, thanks to being hosted by the government’s Center for Inter-religious Dialogue. We also met many different organizations and individuals who work for peace and promote understanding between Iran and the outside world. Our meetings included visits with: Iranian war veterans who are advocating for peaceful resolution to conflict; Mofid University faculty and students, in the holy city of Qom; several Jewish organizations and synagogues throughout the country; Members of Parliament— including elected women as well as Christian and Jewish representatives (minority religions have official representation in the Iranian Parliament). We also had opportunity to meet with Ayatollah Sayed Mousavi Bojnourdi, the head of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute in Tehran, and finally, at the end of our trip, we attended the Islamic World Peace Forum.
Personally, for myself, the most exciting part of this trip was to meet with many of my countrymen and women from diverse backgrounds, many of whom I did not previously know.
One of the interesting people I met was Mr. Habib Ahmadzadeh, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. Habib was 16 when the war started. He is originally from Abadan, a city known as the Bride of the Middle East for its beauty. Abadan — located at the top of the Persian Gulf in western Iran, at the southern end of its border with Iraq — was one of the very first cities to be attacked by Saddam Hussein’s forces in August 1980, when war began between the two countries.
Habib has many stories to tell from the war. Not only Habib’s own stories captured my attention, but the stories of his friends and comrades did so as well. Habib introduced me to a new phase of my love for my country. He captured my soul by telling me things about a part of my native land that I never knew, stories of the war and the sacrifices that my country folk made during the war. He took my heart into the streets and alleyways of Abadan and nearby Khorramshahr.
With his memories, Habib took me into the heart of the war with all its bitterness and ugliness. I found out that I knew very little about my country and its people. I found out I knew only a little about the evil parts of the war. Until then, I had heard a lot about the Iran-Iraq war, and had even experienced it to the extent of being a youth in Iran during those years. I had seen many pictures, read many stories, and heard many dramatic reports of the war. But Habib’s recollections were more real than anything I had seen, read, or heard thus far.
Now Habib works very hard, along with his other friends, those who like him and have had the same experiences, to deliver the messages of the brutality of war and the hope of peace. Even though Habib and his friends are not registered as an official organization, I would like to call them “Veterans for Peace.”
They work in the arts, making movies and documentary films, writing stories, and working on projects aimed at educating the younger generation to understand the ugliness of war. Much of their work is based on their memoirs and stories from the days of the war. Fortunately, one of Habib’s books, Chess with the Doomsday Machine, is translated in the English by Paul Sprachman. Limitedcopies can be found online, including on Amazon.com.
Meeting Habib has been a revelation to me. I plan to write more about him, his friends, and their work.
