As the United States and Iran sat down in Vienna to begin drafting a long-term nuclear agreement, an exchange of another kind was playing out in and around a pastoral university a couple of hours from Washington.

A delegation of Iranian women students from Jamiat al-Zahra, the world’s largest theological seminary for women, is in the United States for the first time to attend lectures at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The group of nine women — mostly postgraduate students in their 20s — from the Iranian theological center of Qom, also visited Washington and spent a weekend in the Amish country around Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Interviewed by Al-Monitor on May 14 in Washington, the young women and their escorts said they already knew a great deal about the United States from their studies and the media, but were favorably impressed by the family values of their Mennonite hosts and especially by the simple lifestyle of the Amish.

They were also eager to show Americans that women in the Islamic Republic have progressed in terms of education and have aspirations for careers. The society as a whole is now more than 85% literate and women outnumber men in Iranian institutions of higher learning, although not in Shiite seminaries.