Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0In fact, on one occasion, the interviewer identified me as \u201cthe President\u201d of the Church. \u00a0I remember thinking to myself, \u201cI hope that Elder Packer doesn\u2019t watch Iranian state television!\u201d \u00a0I kept correcting them; they kept doing it.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
On another occasion, a few of us were taken to visit the home of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. \u00a0It was a very curious place. \u00a0Adjacent to it was a kind of art museum, devoted to paintings of and about Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and, until his death, the \u201cSupreme Guide\u201d of the Islamic Republic of Iran. \u00a0One of them showed his entry into heaven. \u00a0Another, which reminded me rather amusingly of the opening scene of The Sound of Music<\/em>, with July Andrews whirling around in a meadow in the Austrian Alps, showed the Ayatollah crossing a green mountain landscape with vivid red tulips springing up in his footsteps behind him. \u00a0The weirdest item was a five-minute film on a continuous loop showing doctors at his deathbed, struggling vainly to save him and then lamenting his passing. \u00a0Coupled with it was a five-minute loop of his heart monitor, finally flat-lining before it started all over again.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Afterwards, an Iranian television crew wanted my opinion of the Ayatollah. \u00a0Very aware of the fact that I was in a country without an American embassy but with a lethally unpredictable judicial system and a deep hatred for the \u201cGreat Satan,\u201d I opted for non-committal diplomacy: \u00a0The Ayatollah Khomeini, I declared, was plainly very dedicated to his beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Back in November, I launched a series of posts about my one and only trip to Iran: \u00a0 \u201cIran 1: Arriving in Tehran\u201d \u00a0 Incidentally, I think that I failed to mention, in that first entry, that, despite having arrived in the airport at Tehran around midnight, the sun was rising by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[936,864,3943,3946],"class_list":["post-71251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daniel-peterson","tag-iran","tag-khomeini","tag-television"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Ayatollah](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/07\/503px-Roollah-khomeini.jpg\")
<\/a>