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The news from Zimbabwe over the past several weeks has been deeply disturbing to all those who care about human rights and democratic elections. Today's international media reported the arrest yesterday of the opposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangarai, who is trying for the third time to achieve victory over President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, which has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980.

As someone who has traveled to Zimbabwe, a spectacularly beautiful country with a highly-educated population, and been blessed to know many people from that nation, I have personally felt incredible pain and sadness at the reports I have been reading. I know many Zimbabweans who have left the country in recent years, mostly black, and have heard their stories of the economic despair in the country as well as the political repression that has increased each year.

History was made yesterday. And I was there to witness it. My colleague, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, was invited to stand before the congregation of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Tehran, Iran. And as I should have realized she would, Lynn claimed the prophetic mantle.

[Editor's Note: Iran peace delegation member David Drake of Des Moines, Iowa, sent the following reflection from Tehran, as he and the delegation prepared to head to Imam Khomeini International Airport on Saturday evening, December 15th.]

Dear friends and family -- it's 10:30 p.m. here -- 8 1/2 hrs later than my home in Iowa.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation's fifth peace delegation to Iran has now arrived in the city of Shiraz, considered by many to be jewel of classical Islamic culture as well as the seat of the ancient Persian pre-Islamic civilization. As the delegation concluded its first few days, spent in Tehran, one delegation member, Rick Zand, was afforded an unusual opportunity to meet with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and a group of 20 Iranian women.