Maryam Faghih Imani seems an unlikely candidate to give an address that will touch on making peace between Israelis and Iranians, as she will at an international forum in Oslo Wednesday. After all, she grew up the daughter of one of Iran’s most prominent ayatollahs. She spent her summers in the city of Isfahan playing with the children of other prominent ayatollahs, including those of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

When Iranian militants seized the United States Embassy and took dozens of Americans hostage on an overcast Sunday morning in November 1979, I assumed it was just a brief anti-American sit-in. My main concern, I told my editors at Newsweek, was not how dangerous Tehran would be.