Free Republic

TEHRAN, Aug. 22 — Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American scholar freed on bail after three months in prison, is waiting for Iranian judicial officials to inform her whether the travel ban against her will be lifted and a new passport issued to allow her to return to the United States, her husband and her lawyer said Wednesday. In addition, a judge told the wife of Kian Tajbakhsh, who is also in jail in Iran and who like Ms. Esfandiari has dual nationality, that her husband would not be released from Evin Prison for at least another 10 to 15 days. “He...

Authorities announced new arrests in the cases of two Iranian-Americans held on charges of conspiring against the government, saying Wednesday that an unspecified number of Iranians had been detained. State radio quoted Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Ejehei as saying that: "Internal elements related to these people have been arrested." Ejehei did not say how many people were arrested or give details on their purported connections to Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh. "We are hopeful their names and reasons of detention will be announced," he said. The Intelligence Ministry has alleged that Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh were seeking to set up networks...

Iran: The Conspiracy that Wasn't July 20, 2007 The New York Post Amir Taheri . . . THOUGH IT DOES SEEM A FINE IDEA Esfandiari: Hardly a "foreign plotter." EVER since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran has been obsessed with conspiracy theories, especially "foreign plots" to topple it. This paranoia was demonstrated again Wednesday with the televised confessions of two U.S. citizens of Iranian origin arrested in Tehran and accused of working for the "Great Satan." To most Iranians who watched the sordid show, the two "enemies of Islam" seemed unlikely heroes of an international conspiracy....

SO FAR, four Iranian Americans have been detained by the Iranian government and charged with espionage. The most well-known case is that of Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was detained and later arrested after traveling to Tehran to see her 93-year-old mother late last year. The most recent case is that of Ali Shakeri, a "peace activist" from Irvine, who was arrested in mid-May.

U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari (top, right), a New York-based urban planning consultant and another Iranian-American have been "formally charged'' with endangering national security and espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman said Tuesday. "Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners,'' spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. "She has been informed of the charges against her.'' Jamshidi did not say when the specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She has been held at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison...

IN the United States and in Europe, there is a widespread belief that the Bush administration has failed to engage Iran diplomatically. Among the advisers to the Iraq Study Group, of which I was one, most believed that the Bush administration, not the mullahs’ regime, was the most culpable party in foreclosing dialogue between Washington and Tehran after 9/11. Iran’s American-educated longtime ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, has tirelessly suggested that the administration missed opportunities for improving relations and is tone-deaf to his country’s peaceful intentions. Yet it ought to be clear that just the opposite is the...

American Scholar Is Charged in Iran Tehran Accuses Her Of Seeking to Topple Ruling Establishment By Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writer May 22, 2007 Noted American scholar and Potomac resident Haleh Esfandiari has been charged with "seeking to topple the ruling Islamic establishment," Tehran's state-controlled television reported yesterday. Esfandiari was charged with setting up a network that was working "against the sovereignty" of Iran, the government outlet said. "This is an American-designed model with an attractive appearance that seeks the soft-toppling of the country," state television reported, according to the Associated Press. In a separate statement, Iran's intelligence ministry...

Paris, 10 May (IPS) The arrest of Mrs. Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian-American academic working at the Wilson Woodrow Centre’s Middle East Programme is part of the ongoing cut throat power struggle in Tehran between the hard liners and the moderates, according to many Iranian political analysts. The arrest of Mrs. Esfandiari, of Mrs. Parnaz (Nazi) Azima, of Mr. Hoseyn Moussavian, of several Iranian journalists, intellectuals, students and female activists etc are part of this inner fight in the Iranian regime’s highest echelons, having it roots in the possible start of direct negotiations between Tehran and Washington. In a surprising...

May 9, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian officials have jailed a prominent American-Iranian scholar after banning her departure from the country, according to the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Wilson Center in Washington, had undergone periodic interrogations by Iranian intelligence officials for four months before being taken to Tehran's Evin prison on May 8, according to center President and Director Lee Hamilton. Wilson Center Details The Case Iranian officials have not commented on Esfandiari's reported arrest, and it is unclear whether she has been formally charged with...