We called it, half-jokingly, our Iran-Iraq friendship dinner. It was a party we threw in 2007 for friends my husband and I had made through our reporting—his in Iraq, mine in Iran. They were doctors, translators, journalists. We’d written letters on their behalf to American consulates, Fulbright committees, courts; we’d helped some of them find English lessons, housing, lawyers, friends. They came to this country fleeing war and repression. Some had suffered unimaginably. They...