Iran is growing “stronger day by day” and is in its “strongest position ever,” the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is warning. In a recent show of this strength, the Iranian military held war games and launched its first rocket into space — one that could be used to build intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Britain.

President Ahmadinejad is also up to his old tricks, boasting to an audience in the Iranian town of Talesh on February 22 of the Zionists’ imminent “undesirable ending,” the Fars News Agency reported. More surprisingly, immediately after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s appearance, he met with a visiting delegation of American Mennonites, Quakers, Episcopalians, United Methodists, and members of the National Council of Churches. The group was on a week-long pilgrimage to Iran at the personal invitation of the Iranian president, following an earlier meeting in America.

The delegation came “to build bridges of peace and security between Iran and the U.S,” the Tehran Times reported on February 20.

“We are not representatives of the government, and we are not sent by them,” the general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, Mary Ellen McNish, told the Mehr News Agency. But on its return to America, she added, the delegation intended to travel directly “to Washington, D.C., and visit Congress to give a report on Iran’s desire for peace.”

The delegation’s first day in Iran included a meeting with the Friday prayer leader in Tehran, Ayatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani, who dazzled the Americans. “In a question and answer period with the delegates, the Ayatollah confirmed that the Grand Ayatollahs of Iran have issued a ‘fatwa’ against the development and use of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction,” the Mennonite Central Committee said in a press release. “When asked why harsh language is used against the U.S. in the Friday prayers that he sometimes leads — prayers broadcast across the country — he replied, ‘What you mention is not against the American people. Our objection is to statements of the American government.'”

Ms. McNish, along with other delegates who spoke to the Iranian press, blamed Western news outlets for making Americans fearful of Islam and Iran. After she met with Ayatollah Kashani, she said, “It was so moving to hear Islam prohibit weapons of mass destruction.”

Yet Ayatollah Kashani is known to be vehemently anti-American and a supporter of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. On July 8, 2005 — the day after the London transit bombings, which he called “divine justice” — he gave a sermon before a crowd chanting, “Death to England,” “Death to America.” Speaking against the West, he said, “You brought [Al Qaeda] into being in order to bring calamity to our lives, but, thank God, it has brought calamity to yours.”

During a Friday sermon from Tehran University on January 28, 2005, he warned America: “If you behave with disrespect,” the Iranian people “will punch you in the mouth so hard that all your devouring teeth will fall off.” In another Friday sermon on August 9, 2004, the ayatollah said: “I say to you, the American people … your lives are lost, you will collapse.”

According to a February 16 report on Antiwar.com, the American delegation also planned to meet with Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, spiritual adviser to Mr. Ahmadinejad and an opponent of Iran’s reformists.

A former president of Iran, Mohammed Khatemi, once called Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi a “theoretician of violence.” Many in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are loyal to him. His disciples, including the Iranian cleric Mohsen Gharavian, are reportedly behind an important fatwa released early last month making the case for the use of nuclear weapons under Islamic law. Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi openly supports “martyrdom operations” and is connected to Elias Naderan, the leader of Zeitoon, a conservative group that supports suicide bombings against American, British, and Israeli forces.

Unfortunately, during the Americans’ visit to Iran, there were no reports of the delegation attempting to meet with members of the Iranian reformist movement, including women’s and students’ groups currently under attack by the government. The delegation missed a true opportunity to support those reformist efforts.

Reports did emerge, however, of the delegation denouncing American actions. “We are against the policies of the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan, and its Middle East policy, which is contradictory to the instructions of Jesus Christ,” the head of the Mennonite Central Committee, the Reverend Ronald Flaming, said.

Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.