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Despite stiff warnings from the Department of State, and increasingly hostile rhetoric from the Bush Administration, a group of city employees and a former city council member leave for Iran today to deliver 1,200 badly needed wheelchairs. 

“I’ve had to defend this trip to a million friends and family members who tell me I’m out of my mind,” said former Council Member Polly Armstrong. “But the more I learn about Iran, the more I come to believe it’s an acceptable risk. I’ve been told the Iranians are some of the most hospitable people in the world.” 

Armstrong will travel with 15 people who are making the humanitarian trip to Iran on behalf of the Wheelchair Foundation, a Danville-based nonprofit that has delivered 130,000 wheelchairs to over 100 countries.  

The need for wheelchairs in Iran is great. Niloofar M. Nouri, president of the Berkeley-based Persian Center, estimates as much as five percent of the population, or 3.5 million people, need wheelchairs. Inaccessibility to medical facilities and poor nutrition are contributing factors to the overwhelming need for wheelchairs in Iran, according to a Persian Center press release, 

There are also thousands who were left disabled from the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. 

Armstrong will travel with three city of Berkeley employees — Neighborhood Liaison Michael Caplan, Electronic Government Manager Donna LaSala and Geographic Information Systems Manager Pat DeTemple, who is making his second trip to Iran. 

DeTemple, reflecting on his trip last year, said he intends to be cautious but is not unduly worried.  

“The experience I had last time was so positive,” he said. “The Iranians were extremely friendly toward us, everybody from school kids to soldiers approached us to practice their English and there was pretty much nothing else but smiles.” 

The city is not sponsoring the trip and the city employees are traveling on their own vacation time and with their own money. 

The Berkeley contingent will distribute 600 of the wheelchairs at community centers in the capital city of Tehran and in the southeastern city of Kerman. The Red Crescent, the Middle East’s version of the Red Cross, will deliver the remaining 600. 

Thousands of disabled Iranians don’t have access to wheelchairs. The wheelchairs, which are made in China at about $150 a piece, will give them a new chance at independence, Armstrong said.  

Berkeley developer and philanthropist Soheyl Modarressi has organized the fundraising for and delivery of nearly 1,600 wheel chairs to Iran. Modarressi also organized the travel for those who volunteer to deliver the wheelchairs. 

Besides delivering the wheelchairs, the group will travel as tourists to the Caspian Sea in northern Iran and to Shiraz near the Persian Gulf in southwestern part of the country.  

“The more we talk about this trip the ever more excited I am to go,” Armstrong said. “I’m anxious to learn more about Iran, of which I know so painfully little, and eager to see through my own eyes the things I’ve been reading about.” 

However, Due to the military action and current American occupation of neighboring Iraq, the U.S. Department of State has posted a strong warning against travel anywhere in the Middle East. 

“The threat to U.S. citizens in the Middle East includes the risk of attacks by terrorist groups, including to those with links to Al-Qaeda,” according to the U.S. State Department warning. “Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, bombings or kidnappings.” 

The State Department posted a specific warning against travel in Iran in February, 2002. There has been no U.S. Embassy in Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis in which 54 American Embassy workers were captured and held for 444 days. 

More recently President George W. Bush called Iran a member of the “axis of evil” along with North Korea and Iraq during a state of the union address in January, 2002. The Bush Administration’s rhetoric towards Syria and Iran, both of which border Iraq, has been increasingly hostile in recent days.  

“We do not encourage travel to Iran,” said Department of State Spokesperson Stuart Patt. “We do not have an embassy in Iran so certainly anybody traveling there is unprotected.”