Free Republic

Iran wraps up probe into detained US-Iranians by Stuart Williams Aug 12, 2007 Iran on Sunday said it had concluded the investigation into two US-Iranian academics detained for the past three months on charges of harming national security. Tehran's deputy prosecutor Hassan Hadad added that Middle East expert Haleh Esfandiari and urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh now had to do "written work" before a decision could be taken about their fate. Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh have been held in Tehran in Evin prison since their arrest in May, in a case that has further strained ties with between Iran and its arch-foe...

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...

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...