His extended family is scattered throughout the United States, Germany, Japan and Australia, with only a few still in Iran, but he hasn't abandoned his roots. He co-founded the PARSA Community Foundation, which seeks to advance Iranian culture, education and leadership worldwide. His Iranian wife, Bita Daryabari, established her own nonprofit, the Unique Zan Foundation, which promotes women's health and education in the Middle East.

Kordestani is pinning his hopes on America's and Iran's leaders mending fences, and not only so that Google can gain better access to Iran's vast consumer base. "After 9/11, the whole region was painted with the same brush," he says. "Americans need to understand that Iran is not an Arabic country and Iran is not Iraq."

The father of two is optimistic about the future. "There are so many educated young people in Iran taking part in the global revolution in information," he says, briefly lapsing into Google-speak, "and information is power." He says that although some Web sites are blocked by Iran's government, the Internet traffic in Tehran is as heavy as the street traffic. If you don't believe him, Google it.

The Dance Teacher - Niosha Nafei

While in her late teens, Niosha Nafei taught Persian dance 16 hours a week in the living room of her uncle's Tehran home. She was always on edge. "I worried there would be a knock on the door and I would be taken to jail. Dancing was one of the worst things you could do in the eyes of Khomeini's government. It was pure evil."

It wasn't the first time she was scared. At 15, she was walking her brother home from the first grade someone when in a passing car splashed acid on her. She covered her face in time to avoid permanent disfigurement, but the burn marks are still visible on her left arm. This was apparently a punishment for her father teaching English to the children of foreign ambassadors; the Islamic fundamentalists had just seized power. "That's when my family knew it was time to leave, although I couldn't make it out until I was 20."

Niosha Nafei is a mother of three and former beauty pageant winner who teaches
Persian dance. Her dance academy raises money for cancer research.

Nothing could stop Nafei from teaching and performing dance, and likewise, her scars didn't stop her from winning the 1992 Miss Iran pageant -- held in Los Angeles because Iran's mullahs frowned on beauty pageants even more than they did on dancing. She then graduated from UC Santa Cruz, married fellow Iranian Fardad Jay Jamali, a safety and environmental engineer, and founded the Niosha Dance Academy. "My mother still tells me I should have gone into engineering like my husband," she says with a laugh, "but dance is what I love."

Despite the physical and emotional scars she bore from Iran, she was upset by President Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech. "I accepted every invitation to perform that year, just to show Americans that we're a civilized people with a long tradition of dance and culture. Iran has much in common with America -- the modern high-rises, malls and freeways are no different than in the Bay Area."

Nafei, 36, teaches all the academy's 19 weekly classes in San Jose, San Mateo, Saratoga and San Ramon. Students from 4 to 65 learn belly dancing, choreography and several forms of Persian dance. She performs with her students, who dress in lavish costumes, at Persian cultural events, weddings and an annual recital that draws audiences of up to 1,000. Persian dance shares the spotlight with cancer fundraising; academy dancers raise about $20,000 each year for the American Cancer Society and a charity that sends medications to Iran to treat children with cancer.

Nafei was given a 40 percent chance to live when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002. "I decided that if I recovered, I would make it my mission to fight cancer in the Persian community," she says. "So besides dance, I teach the kids life lessons like responsibility and generosity." The academy's slogan is "Dancers Fighting Cancer."

She lives in a spacious home in the rolling hills above Pleasanton with her husband and three sons, ages 8, 5 and 2. Her 2-year-old, Rameen, is her "miracle baby" because doctors told her the cancer treatments wouldn't allow her to have a third child. "Between the academy and the boys, I don't have time to be politically involved," she says. "But I know that Iran doesn't deserve to be bombed. The people are not the government. Iranians are a generous people: If you get a flat tire, five people pull over to help, and if you visit someone, your host stays home from work all week just to entertain you."

Nafei would like to return for a visit, but she's waiting for political tensions to ease. "I am an Iranian and a Muslim," she says, "even though I don't agree with the ruling imams' interpretation of the Quran." It's a small thing, but she has heard about one positive change in Iran. Dance classes, although only traditional dance in loose outfits, are now permitted.

The Public Servant - Ahsha Safai

"Iranian Americans have excelled in business, engineering and academia for decades," says Ahsha Safai between gulps of bottled water at a Mission District restaurant. "But there was always an aversion to politics. Unfortunately, it was ignored at our peril. When the Patriot Act, 'special registrations' and student-visa restrictions were legislated after 9/11, we didn't have a voice. It was a wakeup call."

Iranian Americans were wide awake by the time Safai put some in a room with Gavin Newsom in 2003. He organized the meeting as deputy director of field operations for Newsom's first mayoral campaign. "We had a good turnout of 150 and Gavin continues to meet with our community at least once a year," he says. "More and more of us are becoming politically active." He notes that Bay Area Iranian Americans have hosted fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, whom he met while working for a year in the Clinton White House.

Ahsha Safai is Community Programs Liaison to the San Francisco Mayor's Office.

Newsom and the Clintons are not the only political heavyweights on his resume. His Marin County wedding last summer to Boalt Hall law student Yadira Taylor - they live in the Excelsior district - was attended by his mentors at Northeastern, MIT and the White House: Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor, and Loretta Avent, President Clinton's deputy assistant of intergovernmental affairs. Safai, 34, has in turn mentored several Iranian Americans in the three San Francisco mayor's office positions he's held.

Safai laughs when he calls himself a Texan Iranian, but it's true. His mother, Marsha McDonald, met Ahsha's father, Ata Safai, when they were college students in Texas, then moved with him to Tehran. They raised Ahsha there until he was 5, when his mother moved him to the safety of Cambridge, Mass., during the chaos of the shah's overthrow in 1979. His father still lives in Iran. "I went back two years ago to visit him," Safai says. "My old house was replaced by apartments, but it's still the big city I remembered."

Since arriving in San Francisco straight out of MIT, Safai has worked for Mayors Willie Brown and Newsom on a variety of projects: opening a teen center at the Sunnydale housing projects, pushing immigrant rights legislation through the Board of Supervisors, overseeing grants to revitalize the Fillmore district, and now hiring young, low-income city residents to clean up litter and graffiti in the city's busiest commercial corridors as a community programs liaison. None of it is glamorous work, but he says it's gratifying because the problems are readily fixable -- unlike, for example, U.S.-Iran relations.

"Americans have a distorted image of Iran," he says. "They know about the hostage crisis and Islamic fundamentalism, but do they know that Persia was the first country to codify human rights or that it has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel? They think of Iranians as terrorists, but none of the 9/11 terrorists were from Iran and there were candlelight vigils in Tehran the night after 9/11. As an Iranian American, I've had to live with the two governments being at odds since I can remember."

He sees hope, however, in the recent meetings over Iraq's future between U.S. and Iranian diplomats -- the first crack in the freeze between the nations in 27 years. "Any time there is dialogue, there's hope. Sometimes it's in times of crisis that the best opportunities arise for countries to heal old wounds. The U.S. and Iran need one another to create a stable environment in that part of the world. I truly hope they can."

Bob Cooper has written about Daniel Ellsberg, a snowshoe racer and outdoor weddings for the Chronicle Magazine. This article originally appeared on page CM-10 in the July 15, 2007 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Copyright 2007, Hearst Communcations Inc.