The
stadium was hung with banners. One translated, "We shall always support
the Palestinians." Another, "Resistance against the conspiracies of
America and Israel will disappoint them to predominate over Iran's
nation." This phrase is attributed to "the grand, great leader." Bit by
bit, the stadium filled until 10,000 worshipers created a sea partially
of white and black turbans (the black represents the Seyed or direct
descendent of the prophet Mohammed) pale and dark shirts. Chanting
echoed throughout the building. Government officials fill the front
rows. Military arrived in groups, in the belief that their prayers will
be answered in multiples. Many, as simple conscripts, seemed less
focused on the proceedings. And behind them, the sea of the devout.

Day 1: A culture in deep conflict

A short history of U.S.-Iran relations

Day 2: A meeting with Rafsanjani's son

Day 3: A meeting with the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini

Day 4: Women's rights rally turns ugly

Student not afraid to mock mullahs

Day 5:The journey home after a pre-election bombing

_____

Sean Penn In Iran

Special to The Chronicle

DAY ONE

In June, Sean Penn and two friends traveled to
Tehran. It was Penn's first trip to the country. What he found was a
culture in conflict. Although the nation is ruled by a very
conservative, tradition-bound government, Penn talked to many younger
Iranians who have a strong interest in Western culture and want their
own country to liberalize its policies on individual rights. Beginning
today, The Chronicle will publish a five-day series of his reports from
Iran:

It's the week preceding presidential elections.
Candidates attack one another's credibility. Activists push to boycott
the vote. Traffic and pollution choke the cities. Leftists support a
no-win idealist. Preachers guide their flocks toward political
starboard. The media have fallen under the grip of standing power, and
should they defy it, they're imprisoned. University students promote
human rights, while fundamentalists deny them. It is a culture in love
with cinema. With Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie. And anything Steven
Spielberg. It is a nation of nuclear power, where the lobbies of the
religious right effectively blur the lines between church and state.
But it is also a country of good and hospitable people. And when the
local team wins a big match, there is dancing, kissing, drinking and
drugs in the streets. Women are graduating the campuses in higher and
higher numbers, occupying government in higher and higher numbers.
Sound familiar? But wait. The women. Look at the women. All is not
well. I'm thinking about the women. This is Iran.

_____

It had been six weeks since my friend, author
Norman Solomon, and I sat around in my living room deciding to travel
to Iran and called journalist Reese Erlich to join us. Reese
immediately began applications for visas. Over the month and a half
that followed, he slogged through U.N. attaches and the cultural and
foreign ministries of the Islamic Republic of Iran and swam doggedly
upriver through the multiple bureaucracies that lead to a journalist's
visa. This process led to continual rescheduling and revised
itineraries.

When the visas were finally approved, two days
beyond our latest planned departure, I was in England visiting my wife
who was working there. On the afternoon of June 8, I watched the
Iranian World Cup team dominate Bahrain on the television of the
Iranian Consulate in London. Iran's victory gave me further reason to
mourn our most recent travel delay, because it meant I would miss the
jubilance that would surely explode in the streets of Tehran.

The next morning, I left London at 6 a.m. to
rendezvous with Norman and Reese in Munich. While I waited in the
Munich airport for their flight from San Francisco, I did some money
changing, magazine buying and snacking. I travel better where English
is not spoken. But English is spoken at German airports, so I remained
restless until their arrival.

At 3:30 p.m. Munich-time, Norman, Reese and I
boarded Lufthansa Flight 602 to Tehran. The other passengers were about
95 percent Iranian and a few Europeans. Last year, including
journalists, fewer than 500 non-Iranian Americans visited Iran. I
looked around the plane, full of modern men and women in Western garb,
returning from vacations, family visits and business. Alcoholic
beverages were served on the plane. But no alcohol sold for duty- free
purchase. Iran is an Islamic state and a dry one. Nonetheless, many of
these travelers were happy to get in their last swill before landing.

Four hours and 10 minutes later and a time change
that would have us land at 10:30 p.m. Tehran-time, came a P.A.
announcement as we went into approach: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a
very important announcement to make. For all our female passengers, by
decree of the government of Iran, all female visitors are required to
keep their heads covered. In your own interest, therefore, we ask you
to put on a scarf before leaving the aircraft in Tehran. Thank you."
With that, women clamored for the lavatory. One at a time as they
exited, hundreds of years of transformation had occurred. All of these
modern women, who would've looked quite at home dancing in a Paris
nightclub, were now covered head to toe in black chadors, makeup
scrubbed from their faces, cleavages and midriffs a memory.

There are no separate queues for Iranian and
foreign passport holders at customs, and, as my pals and I had traveled
in the rear coach seats, we found ourselves somewhere three-quarters
back in the line. I was anxious to get out into the street, to smell
the city and its traffic, to arrive at the hotel, check in with home.
Our cell phones would not work in Tehran, so I hoped that the
international phone lines wouldn't be difficult to get. I noticed that
many Iranians were freely smoking cigarettes in line, certainly no
signs prohibiting it, and immediately joined them. I was quickly
singled out by a uniformed customs agent who instructed me to put out
my cigarette. Only me. Not the Iranian passengers.

Eventually, Norman, Reese and I went forward to the
customs booth and presented our three American passports. We were told
to "wait," rather abruptly. With that, the young Iranian customs
official left his booth with our passports, taking them to another
office, out of our line of sight.

The official returned, but without our passports or
any explanation. We stood dumbly by, as the remaining Iranian
passengers were stamped and passed us.

Over an hour later, we were still waiting in a
now-empty customs hall. I sat on the floor. Reese paced. And Norman,
Zen as always, stood in place. Suddenly, four uniformed customs
officials appeared and hurried us into a small office, where one by
one, we were fingerprinted and directed in Farsi. It wasn't clear
whether the fingerprinting was leading to our being permitted into the
country, or if our passports alone were the reason we were being
detained.

What does he want?

The agent whose large hands had rolled my
black-inked fingers and palms over several printing forms barked at me
to follow him with a wave of his hand. He led me to a men's room, where
he swung open the door and indicated I should go in ahead of him. It
was a bit of a ratty hole. Water closets, open. Worn, reflectionless
mirrors. Where our standard toilets might sit, these are simply holes
in the floor, with dark glimmering puddles beneath, and fluorescent
light above. He just stared at me. Neither threateningly, nor warmly.
Seconds went by as I stared back. Neither threatened, nor comfortable.
"Now what?" I said. He raised his hands and wiped his palms over one
another. Yes, he wanted me to have the opportunity to wash my hands,
rather than to walk, black-handed, into the Persian night.

So I turned to the sink, there were the last
bubbles in a soap dispenser and I tried to pump it. The water came on
automatically, nice modern touch, but it was cold. I rubbed my hands
together under it with a bubble or two of soap, to at least a graying
effect. When I looked for some sort of towel to dry them, there wasn't
one. So, I took a deep breath and slid past my 6-foot-3- inch minder
into one of the water closets, grabbed some toilet paper, and dried my
dull gray hands.

There was, it turned out, a contrivance in the tone
of all this. The language of the Iranian Parliament in the decree for
fingerprinting makes no attempt to disguise the retaliatory impetus of
the fingerprinting policy: Americans do it to Iranians. Iranians do it
to us. When I thanked the agent for his help, I was as much thanking
him for not putting my head in the water closet hole as for
facilitating our clean-handed entrance into his country. When we got to
the baggage area, our driver was dutifully waiting, as were our bags.
We jumped in the car and headed for the hotel.

The streets of Tehran at night are reminiscent of
Baghdad or Mexico City. Jousting, yelling, horn honking and warm
thickly polluted air, mud-splattered motorcycles, winding through human
traffic at death-bound speeds. This was the week before the Iranian
presidential election and the city was papered with campaign posters.
Dominant were those of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. I
knew it would be an eventful week. I did not know we were headed into
the most violent week in Iran in more than a decade.

The Hotel Laleh had once been the InterContinental.
Its modern conveniences intact, we pulled our luggage through the
lobby, greeted by bellmen, ever so warm and happy to relieve us of our
bags. At check-in, it is required to surrender one's passport and
identify what type of visa one travels under. The legality of my
presence was based on my technical position as "journalist." Hence, I
checked in as such, went up to my room, called home, then got some
sleep.

I got up with the morning light, opened the
curtains and could just make out the sparsely snow-spotted peaks above
through the polluted haze. Tehran lies at the foot of the Elburz
Mountains. In some directions, it doesn't look unlike Los Angeles at
the foot of the San Gabriels. Staring into my room from the boulevard
below was a banner with the visage of Ayatollah Khomeini. Our first
scheduled event was the Friday morning prayer service. But that would
not begin for several hours. I went downstairs, out the door, and
walked into the Tehran morning.

This would turn out to be one of the few times I
was able to be alone on the visit. But it was an important time for
that. My unsure footing at the airport, the hustle of the city we drove
into the night before, were by now, dreamlike and wary episodes of
travel. But now I was just one more rested body and spirit walking down
the Tehran street. What I had anticipated of this deeply Islamic city
was some sort of post-chant, post-prayer gloominess, dark- eyed men
with dark beards, eyeing me with suspicion, shrouded women not eyeing
me at all. But that's not what I saw. And that's not what it felt like.

Of course one doesn't see a woman without a scarf,
called a hijab, on her head at least, and a chador covering her body.
It is unlawful to touch a woman in public unless you are her husband.
Girlfriends and boyfriends are not permitted to hold hands. However,
there are many smiles. There was laughter and very warm feelings in the
eyes that fell on this American visitor. Surprised to encounter me in
their city, some told me how much they liked the movie "21 Grams," a
film in which sex and drug abuse are both seen in graphic detail. Over
the next days, I would find that American movies are readily available
and popular in Iran, viewed on black market DVDs. The DVD man goes
house to house, like a milkman might.

The back of the bus

I walked slowly over about a 2-square-mile area.
The image of Ayatollah Khomeini, as stern as an Orwellian leader, is
omnipresent on the sides of buildings, walls, billboards and bus stops,
watching my every move. As I studied one of those building sides, the
searing eyes of their beloved Ayatollah, I stepped off a curb and was
nearly flattened by a transit bus. I leaped backward onto the sidewalk.
And there they were, staring down upon me, Iranian men, in the front of
the bus. But as I regained my bearings, the last third of the bus
passed me and it was there, where everything went into slow motion.
Sliding by me was the rear of the bus, occupied only by women in black
chadors. The back of the bus. I thought of Rosa Parks.

Back at the hotel, I went for coffee and scrambled
eggs at the downstairs buffet. A canned, Muzak version of "I Will
Always Love You" plays. The scene downstairs reminded me of similar
scenes in Iraq, at Baghdad's Al Rashid and Palestine hotels.
International journalists with that "What the f -- are you doing here,
Mr. Penn?" look on their faces.

I grabbed a copy of the English version of Iran
News. I read that the United States was considering the sale of
commercial aircraft parts to Iran. The Muzak changed, and an
instrumental of "Unchained Melody" took over. After breakfast, I swung
by the front desk to inquire about exercise facilities, in or out of
the hotel. There wasn't much available, but there were a couple of
times I found myself running the emergency stairs twelve floors up and
twelve floors down. And it got a bit musty.

I headed upstairs to get ready for a 10 a.m.
meeting with the Iranian agency that represents visiting journalists. I
loaded my camera, my tape recorder and changed into a more formal pair
of shoes, as I didn't know what expectations of dress the prayer
service required. My television was on and CNN World Report registered
a viewer complaint that there were too many stories about China. Too
few covering the Downing Street Memo revelation. I had put myself to
sleep the night before with CNN World Report, special edition on
China's sex museum.

After getting our official credentials, we headed
off to Friday prayers. Security was very tight around the stadium of
Tehran University where the faithful assemble for Namaze Jumeh or
Friday Prayers. We surrendered all metallic objects after going through
a series of metal detectors. I was subjected to an upper body search,
triggered by a cash pouch around my waist. (The interest on credit
cards is against Islamic doctrine and therefore, one carries and pays
in cash.) Then we were escorted to the press balcony.

The stadium was hung with banners. One translated,
"We shall always support the Palestinians." Another, "Resistance
against the conspiracies of America and Israel will disappoint them to
predominate over Iran's nation." This phrase is attributed to "the
grand, great leader." Bit by bit, the stadium filled until 10,000
worshipers created a sea partially of white and black turbans (the
black represents the Seyed or direct descendent of the prophet
Mohammed) pale and dark shirts. Chanting echoed throughout the
building. Government officials fill the front rows. Military arrived in
groups, in the belief that their prayers will be answered in multiples.
Many, as simple conscripts, seemed less focused on the proceedings. And
behind them, the sea of the devout.

The opening sermon was delivered by a low-level
cleric, Ayatollah Mesbehi, and focused on economic morality. With every
bow, and only backs showing, the bodies of worshipers created the
illusion of an undulating Persian carpet. The women were sequestered in
an entirely separate area, all but unseen from the press balcony. The
hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati arrived to deliver his sermon.
He leads the six-man Guardian Council, the controversial and largely
considered fundamentalist body that governs state decisions over and
above those made by the president or parliament (Majlis). In an
apparently direct targeting of centrist candidate Rafsanjani, he
preached against the dangers of nepotism in government. Rafsanjani was
known to employ many of his relatives in his cabinets, and represented
a power and following that directly threatened that of the Guardian
Council.

As Jannati transitioned toward international
policy, he reminded what was largely considered a reluctant voting
public that every vote is a shout of death to America. He goaded the
crowd to join the chanting calls for "Death to Israel!", "Death to
America!" Ten thousand strong of voice. I was struck by the familiar: a
cleric guiding his followers in their politics, and toward particular
candidates away from others. It has been my observation that this kind
of invective speech is common, not only in Iran but in the Arab states
as well. According to many with whom I spoke, it had always been clear
from the Iranian point of view, that the call is related to American
foreign policy and does not intend to target the death of the American
people. However, when the supposed purpose of a 10,000-person rally is
in the prayer and scruples of Islam, I can say that as an American (a
half Jew, by the way), the chant demeans both intent and any religion
that aspires to a core of love and reduces it to a cheap political
threat of violence.

As the service came to its end, hands released the
prayer beads counted for pacing of prayer. In our case, we checked
Reese's watch, which said it was time to beat the crowd and get back to
the car. We went back through the multiple security checks like the
first fleeing audience members of a rock concert..

TOMORROW: A meeting with Rafsanjani's son

____________________________________________________________________________

A short history of U.S.-Iran relations

Iran is not an unsophisticated country. These are
not unrefined people. And many, even among the worshipers at the Friday
prayer service, do not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the
call for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." However, in the
mantra of chant, comes an adulated sense of horror. Why such anger at
the United States? Where had Iran's traumatic experience with American
power begun?

Just after the midpoint of the 20th century, Prime
Minister Muhammad Mussadiq -- erudite, secular and committed to a
democratic vision of Iran - cast a formidable shadow across the world
stage. At home his popularity grew as he insisted on putting an end to
Britain's long-standing plunder of Iranian oil. In April 1951, Mussadiq
took decisive action, nationalizing the British oil firm that had
enjoyed a sweetheart deal with Iran's government. Despite fury in
London, he set up the National Iranian Oil Co.

British leaders got nowhere when they asked the
Truman administration to use the U.S. government's more trusted
position in Tehran to help overthrow Mussadiq. But as soon as President
Eisenhower took office in early 1953, his foreign-policy team rolled up
its spooky sleeves to get the job done. The regal Shah of Iran -- a
faithful buddy of British oil executives -- was losing his power
struggle with Mussadiq, and in August the Shah abruptly left the
country and fled to Rome. The CIA, working as senior partner with
Britain's MI6, quickly moved to subvert Iranian democracy.

CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of
Theodore Roosevelt, labored feverishly in Tehran to coordinate a coup
that brought down Mussadiq in August 1953 and quickly restored the Shah
to the throne. Western oil companies were back in charge of Iran's oil,
and the Shah initiated what turned out to be a quarter-century of
political repression, torture, and killing.

Author Dilip Hiro wrote:

"America -- a power that most secular nationalists
had initially considered to be benevolently neutral to Iran in its
dispute with the British -- had clandestinely allied with Britain to
overthrow a government that represented popular nationalist interest.
This reprehensible act of the United States left a deep scar on the
minds of Iranians, implanting most of them with abiding animosity
toward America."

With the 1979 revolution, came the flight of the
Shah and the return of Iran's exiled spiritual leader Ayatollah
Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini.

___________________________________________________________________________

DAY TWO

After attending Friday prayer services in Tehran,
Sean Penn, who visited Iran in June in the days before the country's
presidential election, prepares for a meeting with the son of a former
president of Iran. Mehdi Rafsanjani was also a campaign director for
his father.

We were sitting in Nayeb restaurant in central
Tehran. I'd been holding a piss through the hours of prayer service. So
after I ordered my lunch, I excused myself to the men's room. "Men's"
was written in Farsi above, and "Manly" in English below. I stepped
into the water closet, grateful to just have a piss. If I'd had more
serious business there, it would've been a squat job with no hook for
one's jacket. Now, that would've been manly.

After lunch we had an appointment with Mehdi
Rafsanjani, a campaign director and son of former President Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani. He's an informal man. A little portly, he seemed
almost amused at the opportunity not so much to answer our questions
but to anticipate them. We spoke on a range of issues, from Iran's
nuclear intentions to the rights of women, the process of elections and
the history of our two countries' tension. In almost all cases, he
referred our questions back to us. "You have less candidates than we
do." "You develop nuclear energy." Norman Solomon took this one on.
Referring to pockets of high cancer rates in the vicinity of our
nuclear facilities, he conceded that perhaps we have made some
mistakes. The young Rafsanjani responded, "We like your mistakes." The
issue of nuclear weapons brought an ironic smile to his face. "Why does
the U.S. administration continue to pressure and pry into our business?
It was the United States that made the chemical weapons used by the
Iraqis against 10,000 people at Halabja." (Only six weeks after the
horrific events in Halabja, President Reagan sent his Middle East
envoy, current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to deliver to
Saddam Hussein the news that the United States had taken Iraq off its
terrorist hot list. The meeting was sealed with the now infamous
photograph of Rumsfeld and Hussein shaking hands.)

Currently, the United States holds $12 billion in
Iranian assets frozen. And young Rafsanjani suggested the releasing of
those funds might be a good first step for the United States in the
normalization of relations with Iran.

Then he said something that really caught my ear.
"There are four or five dissidents only who are currently in prison,"
he said with disconcerting ease. "Even you, in the United States, have
journalists in prison, probably the same amount, and some currently
under threat. There are some human rights issues, then we have to solve
that. In the United States, your Guardian Council are the rich. It is
not so different." In the days to come, the younger Rafsanjani's words
would be put to the test. He had posed a balance between Iranian
treatment of free press and that in the United States. I chose to
diligently consider this proposition, and was mindful of the cases
against Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, and separately, the suspicious
umbrella over Robert Novak back home. (Iranian law demands journalists
reveal their sources upon government request. Our own 1972 Supreme
Court decision effectively demands the same of journalists in the
United States.) While the language of the court decision may have been
gray, today Miller sits in jail for refusing to reveal a source. The
information assault aimed at a high-profile visitor will keep you busy.
Journalists seize the opportunity to chat you up with their Middle East
expertise. If you're not feeling chatty, they'll write dismissive
things about you in their columns and blogs. In all these things, the
human ego affects information.

At the same time, I found myself approached with
hundreds of opportunities for interviews with all those on the
journalists' circuit of interviewees. I was offered interviews over
here, interviews over there. I was even contacted for a potential
interview with former president and candidate Rafsanjani himself. But I
was a little uninterested in most of it. Journalists spend so much of
their time in pursuit of regurgitated information. Let's talk to this
one for that side, that one for this side. The analysts say there is a
possibility of developing arms. The diplomats deny any interest in
doing so. Some say it's anti-Islamic. And other journalists back in the
States read those quotes and paraphrase them or borrow them for their
own articles. Offhand remarks by the "usual suspects" suddenly become
unassailable fact. It adds up to a lot of print about the same thing;
it makes you dizzy. You begin to lose your clarity, focusing entirely
on the power establishment and losing the important story of any land:
its people. Meanwhile, on the street, there are interesting rumblings
about people who dared to challenge the official version of the truth.

Akbar Ganji, a heroic investigative journalist who
at one time wrote columns implicating high-ranking individuals in
assassination of dissidents, had disappeared two days before my arrival
in Tehran. The talk on the street had him in prison or dead. Ganji had
already spent 62 months behind bars on a term that began in April 2000
for expressing political views. (The following day, it would be
revealed by Human Rights Watch that he had been taken back into
solitary confinement at Tehran's Evin prison, was barred from contact
with family or lawyers and has taken to a life-threatening hunger
strike.)

I put out the word that I would like to speak with
Abbas Abdi, another prominent dissident who had been jailed two years
for polling Iranians on relations toward the United States. I was told
that in the uncertainty of the moment, and because of the disappearance
of Ganji, Abdi was giving no interviews. I was starting to question,
very seriously question, Mehdi Rafsanjani's view of what represents a
free press in Iran versus that in the United States.

In the late afternoon on Friday, following our
meeting with Mehdi Rafsanjani, there was to be a rally at the primary
campaign headquarters of the elder Rafsanjani in Elahiyeh, on the north
(and rich) side of Tehran, in the highlands. Some outdoor cafes, nice
cars, posh houses. We drove through the congested city some 40 minutes
to the foothills that are Elahiyeh. We pulled over beside a cafe and
went inside.

It was a little, bohemian-looking place, but still
clean and upscale. So was the crowd. Three women sat at the table
behind us. We asked if they would talk to us about the election. They
were happy to talk, but not so much about the election. They didn't
intend to vote. Seemed like a sham to them. Women count as one-half a
man in this country. Insurance benefits are half. Death benefits,
called diyeh, half. And in the "he said - she said" weight of testimony
in a criminal case, half. Guess who wins that verdict? The
disappointments of the Mohammad Khatami regime had created a lot of
this. "Nothing happened and nothing will happen. We have zero sense of
hope in the election," one of the women, a 31-year-old Arabic
instructor, told us. "Khatami promised us some freedoms," she said. "I
can't even get any in my house. I can't even have satellite television.
They are playing with us."

We were briefly joined by a man from an adjacent
table. He offered, "This country was in a state of mourning after the
Iraq-Iran war. We lost an entire generation of Iranians. One million
people were killed. You cannot forget these things if you aim to
understand our country." And I did understand it in this context: The
United States lost 58,000 men in combat in Vietnam. Our population at
that time was roughly 220 million, so the casualties were approximately
.026 percent of the entire population. And yet we all feel wounds of
that war to this day. I imagined what it must have been like for Iran
to have lost one in every 50 people in the country, a full 2 percent of
the total population wiped out in an eight-year war. He went on, and in
describing the evening following the Iranian soccer team's victory over
Bahrain, said, "You should've seen it. I did not think my people could
be happy like this again." (The celebrating on the streets of Tehran
that night was so buoyant and large that police allowed women to take
off their scarves, and there were even reports of open drinking. The
celebration and police tolerance ended at 6a.m. the following day.) The
young man thanked us for listening and returned to his cappuccino.

Two of the women lived together. It seemed that
they might have been insinuating that they were a lesbian couple, but I
can't say for sure. I refer to my internal manual of ethics, and there
it is right there, in "questions unbecoming a gentleman": Don't ask two
women you just met if they're lesbians. I'm big on prudish restraint.
Yet without asking, they do make it clear that their holing up together
is frowned upon by their families and society alike. A single woman may
live with her parents, perhaps on her own if she is able, but with
another single young woman, everybody's back gets itchy. Yet, whatever
the private truth of these two women, "sexual freedom" would make for a
difficult movement to mount, as even uttering those two words together
is against religious law in the Iranian republic.

At some point in the conversation, a man somewhere
in his early 40s, wearing a dark pinstriped suit, stepped over to my
companion Reese Erlich and whispered something in his ear. When the man
returned to his window-side table, we thanked the women for their time,
and they returned to their table. "What did that guy want, Reese?" I
ask. Turns out that fellow had recognized my face. Seemed to feel he
could set up an audience with Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late
Ayatollah Khomeini, the one whose image was staring at me everywhere I
went. He said he could also facilitate an interview with Mehdi's
father, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

While I have said there is a great warmth toward
Americans, it's never far from your mind that you're one bedside book
in the toilet away from death. One handshake with a woman away from
jail. A visitor is subject to all the laws of the Islamic Republic of
Iran and all its thinly veiled oppression. And less thinly veiled
restriction on the press. It's like dancing on a volcano. So, who was
this "Star Wars" Sith? And why did he want to give us his connections?
We were wary, to say the least. He'd given Reese a phone number, and,
after we left the cafe, we shared our thoughts and concerns.

Of course, we wanted the interviews if we could get
them. These were two major figures, one of whom, it appeared at the
time, was likely to be returned to a presidency he'd relinquished in
1997. But we wanted to be careful not to be led into something by one,
and there are many, of those who, for their own purposes, would design
circumstances simply to create a sense of Iran as an unstable place. We
called the cell number, and the gentleman was strangely pushy. We told
him we couldn't do it immediately. He said he could come to our hotel
at 10:30 p.m., and Iran he and some others would pick us up and take us
to the interview with Khomeini. When we said we had our own car and
driver, he pursued, saying, "Oh, it'll just be easier. This way you
won't get lost." Reese told him he'd call him back, and filled us in.

We decided that if he really had the pull that he
claimed, perhaps he would have it in the daylight of the following day.
So once again, we called back the man in the suit and gave him a window
of daylight hours the following day, when we would be able to make time
for the interviews. And added that we would drive ourselves. It had
also been requested that our translator not accompany us. He assured us
that they had fully capable translators of their own. Why was I seeing
knives in my head? Later that evening, the stranger returned our call,
saying the meeting had been set for 3 o'clock the following afternoon;
we could come in our own car to the well-known estate of the late
Ayatollah Khomeini for an audience with Hassan. The meeting with
Rafsanjani would take place the following day.

Saturday morning. We headed off to the grand bazaar
in the southern end of the city. Its covered shopping alleys spread
over nearly a five-mile area. There are several mosques, but it
primarily serves as a place of commerce, a shopping mall with history.
Men pushed newly woven Persian rugs through the crowds on trolleys.
Stores sell ceramics, silver, electronic equipment, lingerie. There are
great corridors of tile and brick ceilings. There are goldsmiths,
bridal shops, figurine parlors. At the entrance, there is even a
bookseller featuring biographies of President Bush and Sen. Hillary
Clinton.

The bazaar was crowded, loud and pungent. I knew
that it had been an economic power center throughout its history. Being
a merchant and being part of the body politic were one and the same.
One of the mosques serves as a paramilitary training center for the
Baseej, (a volunteer militia affiliated with Ansar-e-Hizbollah, the
Iranian wing of its Lebanese Shiite base,) whose thugs make it their
business to control social freedom and enforce their view of Islamic
morality, participating in everything from the beating of young couples
for unlawful contact to the international assassinations of dissidents.
Here they are. The radical right's muscle, who answer only to the
office of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their bazaar
chapter is 5,000 strong, and uniformed police defer to their authority.

On my first trip to Baghdad, prior to the war, it
was easy to see the effect of U.S. sanctions. Sadly but not
surprisingly, when I returned to Baghdad during what had become the
guerrilla war (writing for The Chronicle: Part 1 Jan. 14, 2004, Part 2
Jan. 15, 2004), things had only gotten worse. There had been many
debates regarding the effectiveness of sanctions. From my observations,
the historical effect of sanctions is to leave the people of a country
paying the greatest price. There's no question that Hussein pillaged
benefits intended for his people and that that additionally contributed
to the destitution of his country. Nonetheless, the sanctions on Iraq
were strict and made obtaining standard goods difficult and often
impossible. That is not the case in Iran. Iran is a rich country. And
the sanctions imposed on it by the United States do not limit access to
American or international goods, except to those unable to afford it.
If you want a Mercedes Benz, it comes through the middleman in Dubai.
If you want Frosted Flakes - from Turkey. Heroin, of course - that's
Afghanistan, and represents a significant problem in this dry Islamic
state. I saw these goods in Tehran as commonly as one might in Des
Moines. As I write these notes, I'm drinking a Coca-Cola from the
Brazilian subsidiary of that American company. So as not to implicate
anyone, I'll only say this about alcohol: I found it. It was easy to
find and tasted just as good as it does here at home. .

Tomorrow: A meeting with the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini.

_____

For better and worse, U.S. is a role model

With his family fortune rooted in the pistachio
business and his father the country's former president, Mehdi
Rafsanjani is a man who is comfortable with power. He uses that sense
of his family's influence well, with charm and finesse. When we pressed
him on the question of what Iran does with its radioactive waste, his
only response was, "Well, America does it."

Not only is "America does it" a blind justification
for harassment, fingerprinting and nuclear technology in Iran, it is
also rooted in the culture of the country as a kind of aspiration.
There is a love for our nation that is palpable on the street. There is
a deep desire for our respect in return. And this seems very crucial to
the psychology of Iranian politics, both hard-line and reformist. For
all of the bad blood between our nations, you can't help observing that
Iranians also love us, and what they know of America. I'm not talking
now of the minority militant bastions of hatred but, in my limited
experience, of Iranians in general.

This is a country where over half the population is
under 26 and, given a chance, would indeed move their nation toward a
more secular democracy. It isn't just their declarations of love toward
this traveling American. There is proof of it in their knowledge and
excitement about our country. This interest was not created for my
benefit. It was there when I arrived. Yet if the United States
continues to pursue inflammatory rhetoric, like the "Axis of Evil," or
worse, increased sanctions and potentially unjustified military action,
you can't help wondering if it may move a heterogeneous country, well
on its way to new ideas and pursuits of freedoms, into a homogenous
monolith of hatred. While the regime's behavior has been suspicious,
Iran consistently claims compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (of which it is signatory), and the International Atomic Energy
Agency seems to concur. Any reckless action on the part of the United
States or Israel may lead to Iran dropping out of the treaty. For the
moment, Iran's greatest concern is a possible Israeli attack on Natanz
or Bushehr, its primary nuclear facilities. (It should be noted that
only weeks prior to its inclusion in the Axis of Evil, Iran invested
$560 million in support of U.S. actions in conjunction with pro-Iranian
Afghans against a declared, mutual enemy in the Taliban.)

____________________________________________________________________________

DAY THREE

After a series of mysterious phone calls,
arrangements are made to transport Sean Penn to a compound in the
foothills of Tehran to meet with Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of
Ayatollah. Penn visited Iran in June, in the days before the national
elections.

We rendezvoused with the Siths at 2:45 p.m. in the
hills over Tehran. We were waiting for another car full of them to join
us. A police station to our left, the armed sentry paced, nervous about
our growing convoy across the street. The third car joined us, and we
snaked up the road, like a cruise into the Oakland hills. We came to a
guard station, our arrival was announced, the traffic bar raised and we
were allowed on to the estate.

It wasn't clear to me at the time, but this was a
private road under military guard, on the grounds of which lies not
only the Khomeini compound but the private home of Rafsanjani as well.
As we arrived at the entrance to the Khomeini home, all the Siths
exited their vehicles in front of us and behind us. There was a lot of
Armani going on. Nice-looking suits. We still didn't know who they were
or what they had to do with Hassan Khomeini or Rafsanjani. But now one
emerged as the spokesman. He was bearded. Spoke strongly. And had a
familiarity with the terrain. But unlike him, the other Siths seemed as
intimidated by their surroundings as we were. Yes, they had the
connections to make these interviews happen, it seemed, but just
barely. And there was a lot of nervousness about protocol as we emerged
as a large group: three Americans and nine Iranians, including our
interpreter, Maryam.

Now it was time to cross the compound to meet with
Hassan Khomeini. When we got to the door, we were asked to take our
shoes off. We complied and were led into a sitting room. A couple of
couches and a few chairs. When Hassan Khomeini entered the room, he was
accompanied by another cleric and three or four others. With not enough
room for all to sit, the Siths had taken up fidgety positions against
the wall. I had already been guided to the chair that would be closest
to Hassan. The meeting had clearly been sold on my presence.

As he approached, I was immediately taken with him.
There was a striking twinkle in this man's eyes. He was younger than me
by perhaps a decade. But looking in his smiling face, I wouldn't have
put it past him that he might read my mind. He had a nearly
ginger-colored beard, light skin and eyes, and the black turban of a
Seyed. He greeted me first, then my companions, and asked us to sit. We
were told that while he understands some English, he would prefer to
speak in Farsi and be translated.

He had been told that I had gone to the Friday
prayers, so he began the interview by asking my feelings about that. I
told him that while the sea of belief in Islam had been impressive,
that the use of seductive rage in the chants of "Death to America" and
"Death to Israel" are taken quite literally by mothers and fathers in
the United States. I said that it seemed to me a highly destructive and
inaccurate representation of the country I had come to learn about.
Hassan listened with kind interest. His eyes didn't leave me as the
translator made clear my statement. He uttered a very brief sentence in
Farsi. He said, "Then we should change it." I found myself very moved
when he spoke about tolerance for other religions. He said, "The
purpose of multiple religions is for each to complete the other," and
that "therefore, they are not only to be tolerated, but embraced."
This, from the closest living male descendant of the Ayatollah, who had
declared a death fatwa upon writer Salman Rushdie. And I believed him.
Yet he cautioned me upon further questioning about the definition of
terrorism. "What is the yardstick" he asked, "that defines Iran as a
terrorist-supporting nation, yet dismisses such a claim against
Israel?" And I supposed that his question could be asked about the
United States as well.

As we parted, we were escorted back to our car by
the Siths. We still had no idea who these men in their black suits
were, who had facilitated this meeting. And they were promising
candidate Rafsanjani for the following day. It didn't occur to me to
ask them who they were. I wouldn't have trusted the answer. But we
agreed to speak later and hit the road.

Jeanette Scherpenzeel-Pourkamal is the cultural
attache for the Dutch embassy in Tehran. As arranged by Maryam, our
appointed translator, and Babak, a friend of my companion Reese
Erlich's from his first trip to Iran in 2000, we would meet at the
Scherpenzeel-Pourkamal house for a dinner party. Invited, at my
request, were the pre-eminent filmmakers and actors of Iranian cinema,
notably directors Abbas Kiarostami and Dariush Mehrjui. Though
Kiarostami is widely acclaimed in international cinema, I was
shamefully unfamiliar with his films and those of the other guests. (It
should be said that I'm unfamiliar with the films of John Ford as well,
not much of a cinephile.) We chatted a bit about censorship issues
affecting Iranian filmmakers. It was explained to me that as the
government finances the films, many of those filmmakers' works are
simply banned within Iran. The lucky ones find distribution at
international film festivals. It is mandatory to submit proposed
screenplays to government censors prior to production. One young
director was in the process of shooting a film in Tehran when we spoke,
despite being pre-banned. He had found independent financing and went
his own way. I asked if he had government interference on set. "Not
really," he said, laughing. "Only the Baseej beat up my leading
actress, and they shoot tear gas into my car window when I drive home
each day." He grinned. This was considered mild interference.

I am a reasonably social person, but that isn't to
say that I have been in a group or a party of more than four or five
people without the support of alcohol in as long as I can remember. So,
though we shared an industry, I found myself dry and shy.

Toward the end of the night, one of the guests
suggested that I might venture, the following day at 5 p.m., to the
boulevard entrance of Tehran University. A women's rights group would
be mounting an illegal demonstration. I was told that violence was
likely. Sunday morning, I got up early again and I took a walk around
the back side of the hotel. It was going to be a hot day, in more ways
than one.

The Siths came to escort our car to the Kakhe
Marmar (Marble Palace), where we would have our audience with Hashemi
Rafsanjani. As present leader of the Expediency Council, the body that
resolves legislative issues on which the Majlis and the Council of
Guardians fail to reach agreement, this was Rafsanjani's place of
business. Today, he would be speaking before a group of business
leaders assembled from throughout the country.

We went through fairly heavy scrutiny at the
security check, but we did make it in time for his entrance into the
hall. I was permitted inside to videotape from about 6 yards from where
Rafsanjani sat in a front row among the 200 or so in the audience.
Prior to his introduction and speech, a senior business leader who had
previously opposed him spoke and officially threw Rafsanjani his
support. I was tapped on the shoulder and told that the moment
Rafsanjani finished his speech, which would be short, my companion
Norman Solomon, Reese and I would have our private interview in an
adjacent room, and it might be prudent to move in that direction
presently. As Rafsanjani was introduced and began to speak, we backed
off and were guided into the waiting area.

The Siths milled about nervously and then, "He's
coming. He's coming!" barked the bearded Sith. I placed my video camera
on a nearby stairwell to record the event of our interview. One of the
Siths came to me and positioned me at the shoulders as though I were a
mannequin in a window display. I laughed. But standing
square-shouldered would not be the greatest compromise that I had ever
suffered. And then he came. White turban, white robe and his famously
thin beard. He was guided to me. We shook hands. And then we were
repositioned for what seemed more a photo op than an interview. I began
by asking a simple question related to a New York Times article where
he was quoted comparing our two democracies but favoring his own. He
basically repeated what I had read in the New York Times -- that they
had eight candidates for president where we only had two legitimate
ones. Simple as his answer was, he eluded the heart of my question. So
I repeated it in different words. "What is it that you consider to be
the core of democracy?" His answer: that they had more candidates than
we do. That was pretty much it.

It became clear we would not have more than two or
three minutes between the three of us to ask questions, so I passed the
torch to Norman and Reese. And as I stood by with my recorder to tape
their short questions and his even shorter answers, it was then that my
video camera recorded my friend, the bearded Sith, literally pushing me
into the photo op that somebody thought would excite the kids in
Rafsanjani's campaign. It was dumb show of proximity without substance,
and my video camera dutifully recorded the shove. I left Kakhe Marmar
with less than what I entered with.

-- Tomorrow: Women speak out for rights.

____________________________________________________________________________

DAY FOUR

During his visit to Iran in June, Sean Penn had the chance to witness a rare demonstration in support of women's rights.

The demonstration was to begin at 5 p.m. I wanted
to refresh a bit, so I took a shower at the hotel and began to dress
when, at about 4:30 p.m., my companions Reese Erlich, Norman Solomon
and Babak knocked on my door. They'd gotten an update. What had been
anticipated as likely violence the evening before was now considered
certain. This is a guilty admission, but when you have come to a place
that is unfamiliar, with the intention of gaining a familiarity,
absolutely nothing is more seductive than to see its darkest sides. I
am an optimist. I can always look up. But to see down is to be down. We
headed down to the demonstration.

As we approached Tehran University, traffic slowed
to a stop. It was hot in the car. And sweaty. I could see people on
overlooking apartment balconies, pointing in the direction of the
demonstration and then retreating inside. The closer we got, the louder
the volume of the couple of thousand people before us. The singing of
the demonstrators, the honking of horns, the heckling of the crowd were
rising. I was taping through the windshield as we approached. A traffic
light came into my viewfinder and turned to red. At this point, rather
than stay car-bound, I suggested we walk into the demonstration on
foot.

People were being pushed, tempers were rising, but
for the moment, we could see that the demonstrators had not yet been
dispersed. There were uniformed police, yelling in threatening tones,
and I was taping as I walked. I zoomed through the crowd catching
several close images of some of the 100 female demonstrators. Women
were prepared to take a baton across the head or more as the cost of
speaking out. As we walked through the crowd, I led the way, being
jostled about, moving closer and closer to the center of the
demonstration. A demonstration like this is quite rare in today's Iran
and was probably planned to correspond with the election-week presence
of international press.

Of course, I knew that either the camera or my
Western face could promote any number of responses in this kind of
situation, and on my video screen, there he was: one of many who were
considered to be plainclothes intelligence officers infiltrating the
crowd. (This would later be confirmed by several sources.) I didn't
understand what he was yelling at me, but I knew he was displeased with
my presence and my camera. I said to him, "American journalist! " He
yelled, "No camera! No camera!" I continued to shoot and got as into
his face with the camera as I could. That's when it happened. Like
Michelangelo's "The Creation," he touched me. I thought, "Are you
crazy? You don't even send me flowers. Take me out to the movies? And
you're grabbing my hand? You mother -- theo-fascist pig!" Though I
didn't speak these words aloud, I certainly meant them. (The irony of
being accosted for having a camera was not lost on me.)

This was the muscle of the oppressor I was looking
at, perhaps of the Baseej, one of the violent volunteer militias in
Tehran. Or, as it turned out to be, an officer of the intelligence
ministry. We struggled briefly over the camera. I didn't know what the
limits were exactly. I struggled with my left hand to retrieve my
journalist's credential from my pocket. This guy didn't know who he was
f -- with. And it is my belief that to this day, he still doesn't care.

The longer I held on to the camera, the more likely
I'd get hit in the back of the head by one of his cronies. So I let the
camera go as he held onto my wrist and pulled me through the crowd. In
all the chaos, I was separated from Norman and Reese. We had planned
that if anything like this happened, whoever could stay and get the
story would. We prearranged a meeting place should we be separated, but
those would turn out to be the best-laid plans of mice, and the snakes
had something else in mind.

I couldn't see Maryam, our translator, at this
point, but I knew she was close behind me. As I forcefully presented my
journalist's credential, the bastard snatched that from my grasp as
well. Now I had a hand pushing my hip forward behind me. It's hard to
imagine that guys like this have friends, but evidently he did. And
then Maryam appeared at my left shoulder, urgently explaining to the
officer that I was an accredited American journalist. He released his
grasp on my wrist, and while he didn't give me a goodnight kiss, he did
return my camera and credential, forcing me to put the camera into my
pocket, which it barely fit into, and giving us a shove into traffic to
cross the street and away from the demonstration.

It was a dance of thousands of people, many of them
men, and most supported the demonstrators. Others just observed with
curiosity, pouring through the street onto the crowded sidewalk
opposite the university. For a moment, looking back at the
demonstration, I caught a glimpse of Norman. He was within feet of the
demonstrators, seemingly invisible while he recorded and took notes. I
was envious because I was suddenly recognized by a lot of people. "What
are you doing here?" "Be careful. They'll beat you or arrest you. " My
video camera was closed in my pocket, but it was not turned off. It was
still running. And I recorded all that followed on audio. Several
people warned me that interspersed in the crowd were a large number of
anti-reformist vigilantes and intelligence officers. "They'll approach
as friends; they'll stand by and listen to your conversations." Some
people were less concerned with being overheard. A woman came to me
weeping. "You have to tell our story. You have to tell our story!
They've just beaten two of the women."

The demonstration had turned somewhat violent, but
it was more a series of whirlpools within the sea of people than a
tidal wave throughout. I was told that one of the women who was beaten
had her hijab ripped from her head. These hijabs are tied tight and
don't come off easily. She defied her assailant's order to put her
hijab back on. She said, "You took it off." And with enormous courage,
she went on with her protest. (Take that, wardrobe malfunction.) As the
story was told to me, her assailant impotently went back to his duties
of crowd control. A telling example of the power in courage.

As Maryam went back to the crowd to try to find
Reese and Norman, the police began to arrest journalists. By day's end,
approximately 30 journalists were jailed. I ran into one well-known,
and I will confess, left-leaning Western journalist who suggested I
make an effort to get arrested, that it would "make a great story." So
that's the way they play it, huh?

Maryam returned dazed and alone, unable to find
Reese and Norman. She then tried Reese on a cell phone that he'd
acquired, but the intelligence ministry had initiated the use of
jamming devices, shutting down all cellular phone signals in the area
of the demonstration. With no intention, beyond a desire to make
another attempt to get some pictures, I said, "We'll find them later. I
want to try to get back into the demonstration."

We pushed our way across the street. Two older
women in chadors passed. They whispered to me, "We don't want the
mullahs, we just have to pretend we do." They disappeared into the
crowd. With car fenders pressing against our legs, Maryam and I
serpentined through the crowd and automobiles until we were shoulder to
shoulder among the throngs, within about 40 feet of the center of the
demonstration. And then everything got loud. Really loud. A line of
uniform policemen began batoning the mass of which we were a part.
There was screaming and panic. And our bodies were four-walling each
other -- you could barely move. It certainly seemed as if some could
have been trampled, though as far as I know, that did not occur. But
the following describes the irony of oppression: There was a woman
among the panicking crowd. She reached her hand toward mine and I took
it. Between us, we'd support each other out of this chaos.

All of this couldn't have lasted more than 40
seconds, but at the end of it, the force of the police had only forced
an illegal touch between a man and a woman. We parted instantly as the
police stepped back from the line they had been assaulting.

The crowd dispersed somewhat. I crossed back to the
opposite sidewalk, rendezvousing finally with Reese and Norman, who by
now had been forced away from the demonstration as well. I was getting
too much attention on the street as a movie face, and I felt
inappropriately engaged by it. So, while Reese and Norman continued
interviews on the sidewalk, I jumped in a car with Babak and his wife.
They dropped me off at the hotel, where I waited for Norman and Reese's
return.

That evening, we dined at a pan-Asian restaurant
called Monsoon in the trendy section of town. Evidently, some
journalists had witnessed the confiscation of my camera and press
credential, and there had been reports that I had been beaten. I
worried that my family would hear this distorted news, so I borrowed a
local cell phone and called home. Next, we got a call from someone
within the police department apologizing for what had occurred. But,
while they were apologizing to me on the telephone, an Iranian
journalist arrested at the scene reportedly was beaten in their jail
that same evening for protesting the verbal abuse of him and the other
detained journalists.

Within hours of these reports and the embarrassment
of my treatment (I was unharmed), all 30 journalists were released. We
had just asked for the dinner bill when Maryam got an urgent call on
her cell phone. She stepped outside for a clearer connection and then
rushed back into the restaurant with the news. "There's just been a
bombing in Tehran." Guess I gotta call home again.

-- Tomorrow: The journey home.

____________________________________________________________________________

Iranian student is not afraid to mock the mullahs

After my brief photo op with Hashemi Rafsanjani, I headed to the University of Tehran, which on Sundays is in full swing.

We hit the campus about lunchtime. There were many
students, socializing, eating lunch, laughing. We approached a small
group, a young man and two young women, sitting on a bench. "May we
talk to you?" I asked. Hearing our English, the good-looking, angular
young man turned to us, "Where are you from?" he asked. "The United
States of America," I said. He responded, "The big evil, huh?" clearly
mocking the mullahs who refer to the United States as the "Great
Satan," and to Britain as the "Little Satan."

The young man's name was Arya. He was 21, an
undergraduate student in political science. I asked him about the needs
of his peer group. "Young people in Iran need some freedom, they need
some human rights. ... We need democracy, and the basis of democracy --
it takes a long time. ... I think the big problem here in Iran is the
religion. People are so religious, and it's a big problem here because
in the deep of their hearts they feel something about religion and they
do something unreasonable, I think. ... I want to see a separation of
religion from politics. ... (In the past few years) a lot of things
changed, people realize that they can say their opinion, it's not a big
deal that you have a different opinion from the others, and it's a good
thing, and everybody started to express their feelings and beliefs. But
as you know we have a lot of political prisoners, that's a big problem.
.. . There's always a red line -- don't go over it. But I think it's
gradual, democracy and the knowledge in people is a gradual thing
that's step by step. . .. Now, it's not a good environment, there's a
lot of mental problems -- and a lot of things -- you have to hide your
love, you have to hide everything, you have to wear masks; to have
jobs, to have everything you have to wear masks, several masks. You
have to change every mask you go everywhere."

What about young people who did not agree with that point of view?

"They're affected by the wrong expression of
religion," he said. "They think religion is just to fight, in Islam
especially; you have to fight with everybody, with anyone who says
something against you or doesn't believe your thoughts -- and it's a
wrong idea. You can have your opinion, you can have your own beliefs,
everything, and you can live with other people."

____________________________________________________________________________

DAY FIVE

It wasn't easy to cut through the red tape
necessary for Sean Penn to visit Iran in June, just a week before the
country's presidential election. But it was almost as difficult for him
to get out of the country.

The bomb had been detonated in Tehran's central
Imam Hussein Square. Reports of the number of dead ranged from one to
20. Evidently, this was not a weapon of great sophistication. However,
four simultaneous blasts in Ahvaz, which had killed as many as 30
people, had evidently been the work of sophisticated extremists, with
most suspicion focusing on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization, MKO
(also called MEK). Among those with whom I spoke, in and out of
government, the consensus was that the bombings in Tehran and Ahvaz
were intended to deter voting in the presidential election. MKO, formed
in the 1960s, opposed U.S.-Iran relations under the Shah and
participated in the assassinations of U.S. military and civilians.
Following a power struggle upon Khomeini's return to Iran and bombings
that took the lives of more than 2,000 people, MKO's leadership was
exiled to Iraq. Since that time, they have propagandized their
legitimacy and enlisted the support of conservative members of the U.S.
Congress by supplying dubious information related to the nuclear
weapons program in Iran. Reputable journalists for publications as
varied as the Times of London and Newsweek have reported that the CIA
has increasing ties with MKO. And it is feared the MKO may well be
performing the misinformation tasks in Iran that the Iraqi National
Congress has recently been exposed as playing in Iraq.

As a frame of reference, there are about 68 million
people in Iran. Less than 4 percent are Arab, about half are Persian
and the balance is made up of many diverse groups, including about
25,000 Jews -- more than any other state in the region after Israel.

Journalists were being prevented from visiting the
bomb scene. Everyone we knew who'd made the attempt had been arrested.
So we made the decision that sleeping in the jail for a couple of
seconds of looking at the charred remains of the area wasn't worth the
price of admission.

I went upstairs, called my wife and filled her in
on the events of the day. She was displeased with the bombing stuff,
but it was lunchtime back in the States and she had something on the
stove, so I was spared the "What the f -- are you doing there" speech.
And I was able to spare her the dumb "I didn't plant the f -- bombs"
speech. I went through the messages that had been slipped under my door
during the day, and each day there were many. This one sticks out to
exemplify the experience: "Mr. Penn, on Thursday 14/06 at 5 p.m. there
is a great election meeting of Dr. Moin fans in Tehran University
Stadium and we have some secret news that Ansar Hisbollah group
threaten to attack the stadium, I think it's a good opportunity for you
to cover this news. Because of our safety, please don't speak to anyone
about this message." It was unsigned. So I searched my room for hidden
cameras and microphones until I fell asleep. That night I had a dream.
I was in the stairwell of the Laleh hotel, replaying a childhood
pastime, I had a test tube of hydrochloric acid in my hand. I drop 3
inches of magnesium ribbon into it. I place a balloon over the mouth of
the tube. The balloon fills with hydrogen. I lay it on the step and
grab a bamboo stick with a match attached to its end. I light the match
and reach it to the balloon. BOOM! That'll wake you up. And it did.

It was 9 a.m. We rushed off to Moin headquarters.
Dr. Mostafa Moin was the "students' candidate." A former minister of
education and health, running as the main reformist. He was presently
campaigning in the provinces, but his spokeswoman and key adviser,
Elaheh Kulyai, had agreed to meet with us. Upon arriving at the
headquarters, it struck me that while there were eight candidates for
president, there were only eight. And it seemed odd that there would be
no security, the day after these bombings that even the foreign
ministry had acknowledged were election-related, for a primary
candidate in said election. We cruised right into the building and sat
down with Kulyai. She is the reformist parliamentarian who was the
first female legislator to attend sessions without wearing a chador or
body cape, despite threats of beatings by her fellow female
parliamentarians. She was careful to introduce herself as Dr. Moin's
spokeswoman. "Tolerance is a new word in our society," she said. "The
obstacles of reform are cultural, economic and social." I asked Kulyai
what had led to a statistic where women were so in the majority, both
in graduating universities as well as the 75 percent dominance of
university professorships. She said, "There are two explanations for
this. The will and fortitude of Iranian women. But also, you must know,
that men enter the workplace at a salary of $140 per month, and so, to
provide for their families, they must begin to work, and are not able
to attend university at the rate of women." Like Iranian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, Kulyai believes that reform should
move slowly. She, too, respected the long reach of the hard-liners and
concurred that it would take great patience to bring reform.

In the mid-afternoon traffic, we traveled across
town for a meeting with Hassan Poushnegar of the National Center of
Studies and Public Opinion Measurement. The center conducts polling on
everything from issues of public transport to presidential elections.
He was considered the most credible of political pollsters. But whether
or not the science of his work was unencumbered by the regime, of the
top four candidates, within days of the election, none would go on to
become president. The numbers at that time were Hashemi Rafsanjani at
30 percent, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf at 21 percent, Moin at 15 percent
and Ali Larijani at 14.5 percent. In fact, there was not one person
throughout my entire visit who mentioned a prediction on behalf of, or
a willingness to vote for, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Baseej
militia instructor who defeated Rafsanjani in the June 24 runoff
election and today is president of Iran.

While Mohammad Khatami's regime fell short of
legislating for social freedom, the people of Iran have lived these
past eight years under an increasing tolerance toward reformist
behaviors and attitudes. With the election of Ahmadinejad, even these
phantom freedoms may be rescinded, and I worry for the people I met and
faces of hope I saw. When first lady Laura Bush recently visited
Afghanistan, she was reported to have described it as an "exotic"
place. Iran is also an exotic place. And I can't help thinking of the
students I met on the Tehran University campus and their steadfast
respect for their ancestry as a foundation for their reform. One can
only hope that the exotic integrity of Persia will be maintained by
choice rather than authoritarian moral slavery. In a statement
following the results of what would be a very questionable election,
reformist Moin warned his countrymen: "Take seriously the danger of
fascism. This will lead to militarism and social and political
suffocation."

I was nearing the end of my visit, with my flight
scheduled to leave at 3: 05 a.m. Tuesday. The Film Museum of Iran had
asked for the opportunity to honor me. I accepted for two reasons:
First, I have deep respect for the creative talent in the motion
picture business in Iran, and many of them were being pulled away from
other engagements or had offered to join in this event. Additionally,
it was a way to appease what had been a fairly aggressive and annoying
media that I was very interested in boring into the submission of not
following me to the airport. So I went. On the drive there, as we were
passing under the trees of Mellat Park, there was an announcement on
the radio that some arrests had been made in the previous day's
bombings. But no details. Later, at the museum, I was given a tour and
a trophy.

I left to pack my bags at the hotel. There was a
bit of a crowd in the lobby waiting for me, just young Iranian movie
fans, and I supposed the event at the film museum might have hit Tehran
TV. I made my way through the crowd and up to my room, with the kind
help of hotel staff. It was just after midnight on the ride to the
airport when my mind began to drift to my 14-year- old daughter. Her
middle school graduation was to take place the following day. Because
of the bombings, the airport and country were on "high alert." Should
anything cause me to miss my flight or delay it, I would miss the
ceremony, so I started getting nervous.

My car was diverted by airport police some distance
from the drop-off area. But it looked as though all would go smoothly
from there. That was until I tried to put my bag with the trophy from
the Film Museum of Iran in it through the metal detector. They opened
the bag and pulled out the trophy, looking at it the way a gorilla
looks at a football. "What's this strange object?" it seemed they
thought. They turned it upside down, on its side; one even made a
clubbing motion with it. And just at the point where it seemed it might
be confiscated, the clubber looked at me, suddenly recognizing me. It
stopped him, mid-clubbing motion. He said, "Hashemi?" It was a
reference to a newspaper photo that had appeared from my meeting with
Hashemi Rafsanjani the prior day. Again, "Hashemi?" I nodded, "Yes,
that's me. I'm the guy in the newspaper with Hashemi." He put the
trophy very delicately back into my bag. Zipped the bag shut and I was
on my way to Frankfurt, with a connection to San Francisco. It wasn't
until I landed that I felt sure my notes and pictures would get home
without confiscation.

Jet lag had cut me down around midnight the day of
my return from Tehran, but my fractured body clock sounded its alarm at
4:30 a.m. the following morning. I got up, went to the kitchen, flipped
on the TV and surfed my way through the channels, landing on CNN's
"American Morning" with Soledad O'Brien. Her every hair in place,
perfectly manicured lip line and striking mascara. She reported that I
was in Tehran -- present tense -- on behalf of The San Francisco
Chronicle, as, in fact, I sat in my Northern California kitchen. She
followed by saying that while she didn't agree with me on many things,
I seemed to be a thoughtful and well-read man (I'll confirm nor deny
neither). Then as footage of me ran from the farewell given me by the
Film Museum of Iran, she observed that I looked to be "playing the
part" of a journalist. Gravitating toward such a packageable level of
human insight, it dazzles the imagination that she is capable of making
the connection. Being an actor, and the notion of playing the part of a
journalist? Get it?

In fact, the tape CNN was airing had been recorded
following my official duties in Iran, in essence, on my way to the
airport, and had nothing whatever to do with journalism. Played or
realized. And it didn't end there. The talking heads had me as an
anti-American/pro-Iranian sensation, banking one inaccurate presumption
after another.

While the dismissive editorializing and trivial
attacks on me may be perceived as bickering over details in the life of
a Hollywood actor, the reporting of the number of dead and the purpose
of war are not. I couldn't help thinking about the irony: I had just
returned to my own country, where we had a "free press," after spending
several days in a country that clearly does not. Information is
controlled, restricted, altered to fit the needs and purposes of those
in power. And here was my own American free press, reporting me to be
thousands of miles away from my kitchen in Northern California.

As the Iranian government strives to keep the
people in the dark, consider the outside world and our perception of
this ancient, now strongly conservative culture. What we know of Iran
comes largely from news sources. But if news sources can't track the
current whereabouts of an actor-journalist, can we depend on the
accuracy of the information we are receiving about Iran? These
questions relate to accuracy of information. So what of the spin? Look
at it, more than 1,800 young Americans have been killed in Iraq and
Afghanistan, more than 10,000 maimed and wounded. Numerous contractors
dead. Human aid workers dead. U.N. staffers blown out of their lives by
a truck bomb, and of course, the untold numbers of civilian casualties
unspecified in a war justified, not by persuasion but by fear. Our
nation seems under a spell where courage is violence, and the archives
will show in television coverage and newspaper print, both through spun
journalism and even more dominantly, editorial restriction, a
consistency of media support for the casting of that spell. And with
Iran now in the crosshairs of the nuclear debate, we might note that
the most costly and competitive arms race in the world is taking place
right here at home, between Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories.
Those facts, above all, seem to me to dictate the importance of
accurate and truthful reporting, on all sides of the world debate.

As I came to the end of the writing of this piece,
I was in London. It was Thursday morning, July 7. I had been writing
all night and was rushing to get a cab to the train station, where I'd
board the Euro-star to Paris to attend the wedding of a friend. I came
out the door of my hotel and asked the bellman to call me a taxi. There
were sirens blaring in all directions within blocks of where I stood.

I said, "What's going on?"

He told me, "There's been an explosion."

_____

'We need reform, not revolution,' official says

On our fifth evening in Tehran, we went back to the
hotel and sat down with the deputy secretary and spokesman for the
foreign ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi. This guy was good. He could
out-Western any Westerner, in speech and innuendo. Likable, smart and
with the appearance of great candor. "Iran does not want to encourage
an arms race in the region," he said. "Show us the evidence. You talk
about Iraq -- Iraq was ruined by a stupid dictator. For us, should we
have an independent policy, we experience pressure. But we are glad to
see U.S. troops in Iraq. When the United States leaves, they will not
be well thought of. But Iraq and Iran will have been made new friends.
If the insurgency backs off, the United States should leave Iraq. If
not, it serves us that they remain."

"Democracy," he continued, "is progressing every
day. Be very clear, the inclusion of Iran by your President Bush in the
term 'axis of evil' is not about squeezing us for our oil. The
intention recognizes the influence of Iran on the entire Islamic
region. Look at our country. They have learned how to express their
position under (ex-President Mohammad) Khatami. And now we are in an
election week and you see what they do?" referring to supposed U.S.
support of MKO and insinuating MKO's involvement and destabilization of
the elections through the bombings.

We asked about free-press issues, but he dismissed
our run-in with the authorities at the women's rights demonstration
that day. "You know how this is," he said. "Sometimes the police
officials are in the lower end of literate and you came across one who
behaved wrongly." Reese Erlich blurted that indeed "there were no less
than 20 rejecting our combined credentials at the demonstration, and
clearly that represented the policy of the regime."

"I was not there so I cannot speak about this,"
Asefi responded. "We must be patient. To reform too quickly would cause
a deep backlash. You see about the bombings today, and we expect them
now to continue. This process must move slowly or not at all. We need
reform, not revolution."

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