By Ed Hale

Part I of III

As United States 2008 presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama bickered over how they would “handle the Iran threat” in their first debate on Friday night, citing erroneous facts and competing with one another on who would hold out the longest from engaging in diplomatic talks with Iran, a small group of one-hundred and fifty American citizens representing fifty of the country’s most prominent peace and human rights groups were busy talking to the world’s media about the two-hour private meeting they held with the Iranian President two days prior.

The meeting – which was not revealed to the media until the next day to assure the safety and security for those in attendance – took place on Wednesday September 24 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City during the 63rd annual United Nations General Assembly Meeting. The goal of the meeting was “to introduce President Ahmadinejad to the peace community in the United States and to illustrate how this sector of civil society works to oppose war and the use of violence to resolve differences,” said the meeting’s facilitator, Mark Johnson, Executive Director of the global Fellowship of Reconciliation, the world’s oldest peace organization.

In an exhilarating live experiment in civilian diplomacy in action, the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel was transformed into a veritable who’s who of some of the most outspoken and prominent members of America’s peace, anti-war, and human rights organizations, including Medea Benjamin of A Global Exchange, Jodie Evans of Code Pink and Women for Peace, Brian Becker of the ANSWER Coalition, yours truly representing PeaceWithIran.com, and Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice. There were also representatives from Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Mennonites, the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, American Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, among many others. American citizens flew in from almost all fifty states to hold the private meeting with President Ahmadinejad in an effort to begin the process of what many consider long overdue open dialogues with Iran regarding how our two nations can work peaceably together to secure more peaceful relations with one another.

The issues raised during the two-hour plus talk, many considered vital for the future security of both the United States and Iranian citizenry, revolved around how the countries can begin putting aside their mutual distrust of one another in order to move forward in peaceful negotiations; both the US and the Iranian government’s recent crackdown on human rights, freedom of assembly, and dissidents; the current US occupation of Iraq; Iran’s controversially viewed policy toward Israel; their treatment of women and other minorities; the difficulty on both sides of obtaining visas to visit either country. Of course the big issue of the moment, will Iran accept a compromise on its nuclear fuel enrichment program, was also addressed.

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By JOSHUA BARTON

June 14, 2008 | 6:12 p.m. CST

COLUMBIA — Lily Tinker-Fortel clenched the passenger door armrest as her Iranian taxi weaved in and out through the congestion of cars, motorbikes and pedestrians on Valiasr Street, the longest street in the Middle East and the busiest 12 miles for Tehran’s 13 million residents.

“Imagine a busy street lined on both sides with beautiful, towering sycamores. Miles of sycamores,” Tinker-Fortel wrote in her blog on June 9, 2008, recounting her first afternoon in Tehran.

It was day one of a 12-day, 21-person civilian diplomacy trip that took the 24-year-old peace activist from Columbia to numerous Iranian historical and cultural centers of the villages Qom, Esfahan, and Abyaneh, and the city of Shiraz. Tinker-Fortel, community outreach coordinator for Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, was part of an interfaith delegation that went to Iran in May on a mission of fellowship.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest and largest interfaith organization in the United States, organized the delegation and began their Iranian program in December 2005. According to Leila Zand, director of the organization’s Iran program, the delegation sends civilian diplomats into Iran to meet Iranian civilians, government officials and religious leaders from Iran’s Muslim majority and those in the minority Armenian-Christian, Iranian-Jewish and Zoroastrain communities.

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Article originally published in the Washington Post here

The “axis of evil” has no relevance for me when I think of Iran, a country I’ve found to have a human, loving, hospitable face throughout 40 years of encounters. I lived in Iran between 1968 and 1978, and started returning again, this time with peace delegations, in 2005. It is one of the great joys of my life to see the layers of misunderstanding and fear gradually fall away from those who visit Iran today for the first time.

One delegate recently said, “I met a mullah on the street and he was so sweet! Who would think of a mullah being sweet?” Another delegate, well-traveled in the Middle East, said, “Iranians are the most hospitable people I have ever met.”

A Jewish delegate said he had been told to be careful: “They might shoot you if they find out you’re Jewish.” He was amazed to see Jews worshiping openly and walking down a street in Tehran wearing their yarmulkes. He wasn’t shot, but was mobbed by the worshipers at a synagogue who were delighted to find a Jew among us.

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Check out this tasty nugget from Google Video created by former FOR peace delegate and civilian diplomat and filmmaker Margot Smith, Videomaker www.offcentervideo.com. OffCenterVideo@aol.com

An excellent idea of what the trip is like and what the mission is all about.

it is called Listen to Iran’s People: A Call for Peace

Dear friends,
Below you will find a recording of Alicia, Lily and Lynn on KCLU Crosstalk. We had two call in listeners, one of whom just returned from Iran, and another who had been part of civilian diplomacy to the USSR. It was great.
KCLU “Crosstalk” Link
Here is a recording of our interview: http://www.aliciacattoni.com/kclu.mp3

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb

Hi New York friends!
I’m sending you all an email to a few of my New York friends because many of you were sponsors of my peace delegation trip to Iran last month and/or were awesome email/phone supporters. So I wanted to let you know the details of the official presentation I will be giving about it here in NYC.

The last two months have indeed been insane with almost more work post-trip than the trip itself. A lot of interviews and articles and yes even the obligatory appearance on Muslim TV — (which was quite “candid cameraish I must say).

My official presentation about the trip in New York City will be this coming Sunday. I pasted the details below for you in case you have the time to come - and are interested in this subject. It was quite the experience and we learned a lot. More than anything, we were brought there specifically by the Iranian government to bring back a message to the American people…

So that is why we do these interviews and presentations. It isn’t necessarily a “perfect message.” But it is a real message – as opposed to what we hear on the news here in the States… which is just ‘the White House said…” So, that will be the aim of the presentation. To show some pictures, tell some stories, and answer as many questions as possible about the subject.

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Rabbi Lynn’s Trail Guide To Jewish Nonviolence

Wednesday, May 28, 7:30 pm

JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut Street in Berkeley

$10-$20 sliding scale, to benefit the Aquarian Minyan

by Mark Hare • May 20, 2008 Originally published in the Democrat Chronicle, Rochester, New York

When Hillary Clinton suggested recently that, were she president, an attack on Israel by Iran would result in the “total obliteration” of Iran, some recent visitors to that country cringed. As they did when President George W. Bush likened talking to Iran or Hamas with “appeasement.” Lynda Howland, Tom Moore and Judy Bello have all visited Iran within the last year — Howland, in March — under the auspices of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, one of the country’s oldest peace groups. “A lot of the American public sees Iran as primitive, terrorist and uncivilized,” says Howland, of Pittsford. But that’s not what visitors find in Iran, she says. Iranians are increasingly well-educated, respectful and eager to speak to Americans, she says. She showed me a photo of some soldiers smiling and flashing a peace sign when they learned the group in front of them were Americans. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Dreyfuss, foreign affairs journalist for The Nation, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and several other publications, was one of the 13 Americans on a recent Peace Delegation to Iran to discuss US/Iranian relations and foster more peace between the countries in March 2008 along with Transcendence singer/songwriter Ed Hale, author Larry Beinhart, Carah Ong, Iran Program director for the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, and fifty year veteran activist Stephen Chinlund. Dreyfuss just recently published an article on the trip in The Nation Magazine, reprinted below.  

Letter From Iran - by ROBERT DREYFUSS
This article appeared in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Nation.

Across the street from the sprawling shrine to Fatima al-Masumeh,
the revered sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Shiite imam, a group of
campaign workers on a rooftop are busy unfurling wall-sized election
posters for a conservative candidate in Iran’s March parliamentary
election. We’re in downtown Qom, a city of 1 million about 100 miles
southwest of Tehran. Qom is Iran’s religious capital, the wellspring
for a host of fundamentalist clerics who’ve ruled Iran since 1979,
and it is an eerie place. Unlike some other cities in Iran, where
urban professionals, merchants and the middle class try to push back
against onerous restrictions on freedom of expression and women’s
dress, there’s little evidence of that in Qom. Women are cloaked
head to toe in black garments, and turbaned mullahs on motorbikes
are a common sight.

Under a brilliant blue sky, mourners are lining up to enter the
shrine and pay their respects to Fatima, whose remains are entombed
inside an Oz-like green-mirrored vault. Among the mourners, in
formation behind a green banner, are a phalanx of grim-faced,
muscled militiamen, members of the Basij corps, wearing black T-
shirts and black headbands. The Basij is an estimated million-strong
volunteer paramilitary force that serves as an adjunct to the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and in 2005 the Basijis voted en
bloc to help elect hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president.

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Letter to the Editor of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle by Lynda Howland :: Originally Published March 29th, 2008

Having just returned from a trip to Iran with an interfaith peace delegation from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I am distressed by the increase in U.S. posturing regarding Iran. Our delegation met with numerous political, religious and cultural figures in Iran, including the former president and reformer, Mohammad Khatami. His message to us, voiced by so many others with whom we met, was: “The United States is a great nation. The Constitution is one of the most important documents for justice, democracy and freedom. Why should violence toward and humiliation of others come out of such a great nation? Let us all resist another buildup to another senseless war. Unlike the United States, Iran has never attacked another nation.”

Iran need not be our enemy.