OPINION — Twenty-five years ago today, my father woke me at 4 a.m. in Hawaii with five words I will never forget: “My son, America is at war.” Two weeks later, I found myself in Tehran, surrounded by ordinary Iranians waiting in line to offer an American chocolates, photographs—and tears. Twenty-five years later, I keep asking myself: What happened to us?

What did you do on September 11, 2001?

Almost everyone old enough to remember that day has an answer. I certainly do.

eTurboNews was just over five months old. I was asleep in my home in Haleiwa, on Oahu’s North Shore, dreaming about how we could make this strange new idea of an online global travel publication work.

At about 4 a.m. Hawaii time, my private, unpublished telephone line rang. My father was calling from Germany. He could hardly speak. “My son,” he finally said, “America is at war; please be careful, and you can come home anytime.”

I turned on the television. I could not believe what I was seeing.vEvery channel showed the same unimaginable images from New York. I contacted our Manhattan correspondent, Dr. Elinor Garely, who 25 years later still writes for eTurboNews.

People were fleeing indoors, she told me. Dust and debris were everywhere. I became glued to my computer, sending updates to our eTN readers worldwide every few minutes.

Responses poured in. Disbelief. Fear. Questions. But also hope.

A desperate call from the Tourism Authority of Thailand

At approximately 6 a.m., another call came. The Tourism Authority of Thailand in Los Angeles desperately wanted to know whether I had heard anything about their colleagues in New York.

TAT’s New York office was on the 36th floor of the World Trade Center. Just one week earlier, I had visited them together with my friend Feisol Hashim from Indonesia, one of ASEAN tourism’s influential leaders. eTN was publishing the YAHOO ASEAN Tourism Group at that time.

Fortunately, the TAT team was safe. Their office was scheduled to open at 10 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Sometimes survival comes down to minutes.

Then America’s airspace closed. Flights crossing the Pacific were diverted. Honolulu suddenly had stranded travelers everywhere. Like many in Hawaii, I volunteered.

A couple stayed in my home for several days until flights resumed. They arrived as strangers. They left as friends. At the time, I thought this was one of the most important lessons September 11 had taught me. Two weeks later, I learned an even bigger one.

I Went to Iran

I had been invited to Tehran to represent the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (today World Tourism Network ), an organization eTurboNews launched to support sustainability and climate change. A reader from Iran invited us to exhibit as the only Western company at a handicraft and tourism event held at the Olympic Training Center in Iran.

Even before September 11, I had been nervous about going. After the attacks, friends told me I was crazy. America had just suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history, and I was going to the Islamic Republic of Iran? I went; perhaps I was 25 years younger and brave. And 25 years later, what happened there remains one of the most moving experiences of my life.

At our stand in Tehran, ordinary Iranians began lining up.

• Not government officials.
• Not diplomats.
• Ordinary people.
• Some waited an hour.
• Some waited two.
• They wanted to talk to the American.
• They wanted to talk to me.
• I remember people with tears in their eyes.
• I remember people offering me chocolates.
• I remember Iranians pulling photographs from their pockets and showing me sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and cousins living in America.
• They wanted me to know that they were horrified by what had happened in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
• They wanted to say they were sorry.
• They wanted Americans to understand something very simple:

Do not confuse us with those who did this.

• I wasn’t a diplomat.
• I wasn’t representing the United States government.
• I was a tourism publisher whose company was barely six months old.
• None of that mattered.
• For those few days, our little tourism stand became something else.
• It became a place where people who were supposed to be separated by politics discovered they could still speak to one another as human beings.
• No negotiations.
• No sanctions.
• No threats.
• No speeches.
• A photograph.
• A handshake.
• A chocolate.
• Sometimes tears.
• That was diplomacy at its most basic level.
• And perhaps at its most effective.

Twenty-five years later: USA and Iran

Now fast-forward 25 years.

• Look at America.
• Look at Iran.
• Look at our world.

The United States and Iran are at war.

Think about that for a moment. I do. Because I cannot forget those lines in Tehran. I wonder where those people are today.

• What happened to the man who showed me a photograph of his relative in America?
• What happened to the woman who offered me chocolate?
• What do they think of Americans today?
• And what would Americans think if they could have met the Iranians I met?
• Governments can become enemies very quickly.
• People do not necessarily have to.

That may be the most important lesson Travel & Tourism can offer the world in 2026.

Today, US President Trump said, remembering September 11. Today we fight the biggest supporter of terror in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Today, September 11, 2026, I received this message from Iran, from someone I had talked to about 25 years ago in Tehran, and who had invited me to his home for a dinner his wife cooked- and it was delicious.

My dear Juergen
I am desperate and have nowhere else to turn.
If you possibly can, please speak confidentially with someone at the U.S. State Department. Tell them that journalists, researchers, and people who have spent their lives building bridges between nations should not simply be forgotten.
All my accounts have been blocked, and I have gone into hiding. Please keep this confidential. I would never ask for help if I had another choice.
Life here has become unbearable for ordinary people. Many cannot even afford basic food anymore. Meat and chicken have become luxuries because people simply do not have the money. Most would help one another if they could—but they have nothing left to give. Without my teeth, I cannot function normally, and I have no way to pay for the work myself. Juergen, I am truly desperate. I feel ashamed even asking you and heartbroken to burden you.

Please, if anyone can help me, ask them not to forget me.

What happened to the solidarity of 2001?

Pilots: “Inadvertent” reinstatement of 9/11 Flight Numbers “reprehensible”

After September 11, much of the world stood with America. For the first—and still only—time in its history, NATO invoked Article 5: an attack against one Ally was considered an attack against all.

• Europe stood with America.
• Canada stood with America.
• Countries that agreed on almost nothing agreed on this.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, remembering September 11 this week, recalled how closely Germans felt connected with their American friends and described the attacks as an assault on shared values of freedom and democracy.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called 9/11 an “assault on humanity itself” and reminded the world that confronting terrorism remains a shared and unfinished task. That word matters:

Shared.

Because sharing responsibility seems increasingly difficult today.

America’s relationships with traditional allies are being tested. Europe is reassessing its security relationship with Washington. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says Europe and Canada must assume more responsibility.

Inside America, we have divided ourselves into camps.

• Trump supporters.
• Trump opponents.
• Right.
• Left.
• MAGA.
• “Fake media.”

We increasingly talk about fellow Americans as though disagreement makes someone an enemy.

• What happened?
• Where did the middle go?
• Where did listening go?

The families are still paying the price

Today at Ground Zero, families again read the names of the 2,977 people murdered on September 11. Twenty-five years later, the dying has not completely stopped.

This year’s commemoration includes an additional moment of silence recognizing those who subsequently died from illnesses linked to exposure to toxic material at Ground Zero.

Hundreds of New York firefighters have died from 9/11-related illnesses. Children who lost parents 25 years ago are now parents themselves. This is not ancient history.

President Donald Trump is marking the anniversary at the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed.

Earlier this week, Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Welles Crowther—the 24-year-old equities trader remembered as the “Man in the Red Bandana,” who repeatedly went back into the South Tower to help others escape.

Whatever your politics, remember that image. A human being running towarddanger to save strangers. That was America, too.

Aviation learned. But did humanity?

September 11 transformed aviation. Cockpit doors were reinforced. Screening changed. Intelligence sharing expanded. International aviation-security cooperation became far more sophisticated.

ICAO Council President Toshiyuki Onuma and Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar remind us on this anniversary that the work remains unfinished.

Cyberattacks, insider threats, drones, navigation interference, supply-chain vulnerabilities and conflict zones have created a new generation of dangers.

Their fundamental message is the same lesson the world learned in 2001: No nation can protect international aviation by itself.

WTTC CEO Gloria Guevara: Tourism connects people

World Travel & Tourism Council President & CEO Gloria Guevara puts another dimension on today’s anniversary.

“Travel & Tourism has a unique power to bring people together—connecting cultures, building understanding and creating stronger links between people and communities across borders.”

Those are not simply nice words for an anniversary. They describe something our industry urgently needs to understand.

WTTC’s effort to bring destinations closer to the private sector could create something tourism desperately needs: a stronger global table where people continue talking even when their governments cannot. Because tourism has access to something politicians often lose: People.

Tourism is the world’s largest peace industry

• Tourism puts Americans in Iranian taxis.
• Iranians in American hotels.
• Germans on beaches in Thailand.
• Arabs and Israelis, Europeans, Africans, Asians and Americans on the same aircraft, passing through the same airports and sitting around the same conference tables.
• Tourism does not magically create peace.
• But tourism creates encounters.
• And encounters make it much harder to hate an entire country.
• I know.
• I went to Tehran two weeks after September 11.
• I looked into the eyes of ordinary Iranians who waited two hours to talk to an American.
• They didn’t hate me.
• They hugged me.
• They cried with me.
• They gave me chocolates.

Twenty-five years later, I cannot reconcile that memory with a world in which Americans and Iranians are again supposed to see one another primarily as enemies.

• Perhaps governments have changed more than people have.
• Perhaps those people I met in Tehran are still there.
• Perhaps they still want to talk.
• Perhaps Americans do too.

Tourism needs to use its voice—now

Travel & Tourism loves to call itself an industry of peace. Now it needs to prove it.

• WTTC has a voice.
• IIPT has a voice
• ICAO has a voice.
• Destinations have a voice.
• Airlines have a voice.
• Tourism ministers have a voice.
• Hotels have a voice.
• And the millions of people who work in tourism have a voice.

Use it.

• Keep people traveling whenever safely possible.
• Keep people meeting.
• Keep destinations talking.
• Keep borders from becoming psychological walls.
• Keep reminding governments that behind every nationality they sanction, threaten or attack are ordinary human beings.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists demonstrated how aviation could be turned into a weapon.

Two weeks later, in Tehran, ordinary Iranians showed me another kind of power.

• A handshake.
• A photograph.
• A chocolate.
• A conversation between two people whose governments did not trust each other.
• Perhaps that sounds insignificant compared with armies, missiles and geopolitics.
• I no longer think it is.
• Because peace has to start somewhere.

Twenty-five years after September 11, perhaps Travel & Tourism’s greatest responsibility is to keep creating those places where it can.

My appeal and my hope for this troubled world

My appeal today is to Trump supporters and Trump opponents, to the left and the right, to Europe and America, to Israel and the Middle East, to Iran—and ultimately to all of us: Let us wake up and find common ground again.Life is too precious, and our world is changing too quickly, to spend it dividing humanity into camps of “us” and “them.”

We do not have to agree on everything. We do not have to forget our differences. But we can disagree without hating each other, and we can remember that before we are Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Europeans, conservatives or liberals, we are human beings. My greatest hope on this 25th anniversary is that the world can rediscover some of the humanity and unity I witnessed after September 11—and that I experienced so unexpectedly two weeks later in Tehran.

Finding our way back to one another may be the greatest honor we can give to the American heroes who gave their lives that day, to those who ran toward danger to save strangers, and to every innocent person whose life was taken on September 11, 2001.

We will never forget September 11.