INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nader Talebzadeh hosted hot debates on Iranian TV shows, and made films on the front lines of wars
He was an active participant in the Iranian Revolution of 1979
He told me stories about how the US Embassy takeover there was utterly spontaneous
His team flew us into Iran, for speeches, interviews, dialogue, creating a vantage point from which one could see a new kind of horizon
It was a chance to see Middle East politics up close, and to see how much Iran wanted to help the people of Palestine
I participated in Tehran in 2017, and then in the shrine city of Mashhad, in 2018
I wanted to come to New Horizon in Beirut in 2019, but in February of that year the Trump White House went to extraordinary lengths to
attack Talebzadeh, and all of us who came to his conferences
The USA levied severe sanctions against him which remain in effect today, despite his death from heart failure on April 30th, 2022.Back in
am not sure any of that is true.As someone who attended two New Horizon conferences, I was never asked to provide information to Iranian
three or four Jewish participants, Jewish thinkers, the last one you were in, we had Rabbi Weiss in it, we had Miko Paled, who was born in
Peace was the patriotic mission of all of my compatriots, fellow speakers who were veterans of the Pentagon, CIA and State Department, plus
a few writers and academics
International dialogue is powerful, and our countries have lacked the courage to re-establish formal diplomatic relations for far too
the young muslim students took the US Embassy in 1979
But the more you study Iranian history, you realize that the US Embassy was a symbol of espionage, it was that center of US power which had
propped up an evil king, Shah Pahlavi, and helped him torture his people with his secret police, SAVAK.We need a moral USA that has the guts
to apologize for its greed and its blunders
And that kind of integrity is a path to peace
The Iran Nuclear Deal, as created by President Obama and Secretary Kerry, was a great step forward.But Trump in 2019 was on a warpath to
demonize Nader Talebzadeh, and his country, with lies
Trump then killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani with a drone missile and escalated the world to the brink of global war.Along the way,
the Trump Administration sent the FBI into our homes, to intimidate all US citizens from attending the 2019 New Horizon conference in Beirut
In person, the FBI seemed a little bit confused
They showed me pictures of Nader and some of his co-organizers of the Conference
After he was sanctioned by US Treasury, Nader told me in a Zoom interview, the attack from Trump was because, he thought, US Government
veterans were now coming to New Horizon
Attending the conference afforded us all ample opportunity to chat with ex CIA insiders from our own government, informally, in hotel
extreme sanctions on Iran
But some say that Trump may want a different policy direction, soon
Jesus Christ was a lot like Nader, in many ways
He was an organizer, he created dialogue, rather than war, he was a peace-maker, and he created a movement of peace-makers
the summits of the Blue Ridge Mountains
I am up on the horizon, looking down on the valleys, on the Skyline Drive
In the most peaceful views, I feel the spirit of Nader here, because he lived here long ago, in Front Royal, when he was young and in the
the airport coming back from Iran, a magic carpet from a psychedelic spiritual paradigm shift, a trip without drugs, a dreamland world, the
forbidden city, a place closer to God, the Holy City of Mashhad, the Reza Shrine, so glorious in the golden dawn of that new day, with no
jet lag and no sleep, cleaned out and buzzing, praying, seeing a new horizon
Hicks is a progressive activist and writer, who is involved with the Democratic Socialists of America and serves as a County Committee
Member in the Brooklyn Democratic Party, and he was a friend of the late Nader Talebzadeh.Photo: Sander Hicks (L) and Nader Talebzadeh in an
This article first appeared/also appeared in Tehran Times
