Bizarre encounter of the week

JTA is reporting on an American rabbi, Lawrence Troster, who recently attended an environmental conference in Teheran, of all places.

Troster barely got out of the hotel that housed the convention, and so didn’t get to meet Tehran’s Jewish community.
But “as a Jew I was entirely comfortable there,” he said. “There was a lot of security at the conference, but it was unobtrusive. I never felt any hostility. And nobody asked me about Israel.”
Though he believes he was the only Jew registered at the conference, Troster did see two Chasidim there, fresh from a meeting with the country’s president, Mohammad Khatami.
He quickly realized that the two were members of the anti-Zionist Satmar sect.
“They weren’t participating in the conference, but they were welcome because they were anti-Zionist,” Troster said. “It was the last place I expected to see a Chasid, but you never know who you are going to run into at these things.”

Apparently not...