TEHRAN, May 29 (Reuters) — Iran has charged three Iranian-Americans with spying, officials said Tuesday, a day after Washington and Tehran held their highest-profile talks in nearly 30 years.
Under Iranian law, conviction on the charge can lead to a death sentence.
A judiciary spokesman, Alireza Jamshidi, said the three were Haleh Esfandiari, an academic; Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist; and Parnaz Azima, a journalist.
News of the charges emerged a day after officials from Iran and the United States, which have been antagonists since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, met in Baghdad for talks on how to end the conflict in Iraq.
Iran accuses the United States of using intellectuals and others inside the country to undermine the Islamic Republic through what it calls “velvet revolution,” a reference to the nonviolent overthrow of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The United States has dismissed the accusation and denied that the three were spies.
A top Iranian Intelligence Ministry official said Tuesday that foreign powers were trying to recruit university professors attending conferences abroad, state television reported.
“Unfortunately our university professors are under threat of being used by other countries’ intelligence services,” the official, who was not identified, was quoted as saying.
The United States has condemned the arrest of Ms. Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which is based in Washington. She was detained on May 8 and accused of spying and acting against national security.
A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, denied Tuesday that Ms. Esfandiari, Mr. Tajbakhsh and Ms. Azima were spies and called again for their release. “It’s absolutely absurd to think that they in any way, shape or form pose a threat to the Iranian regime,” Mr. Casey told reporters.
Asked if he could deny the three were spies, he said: “Absolutely. It’s absurd to allege that they are American spies, American government employees, or that anything they’ve been doing in Iran is driven by American government concerns.”
Mr. Jamshidi said the Intelligence Ministry was investigating Mr. Tajbakhsh’s case.
The Open Society Institute, based in New York, said last week that Mr. Tajbakhsh, a social scientist and urban planner, had been arrested and imprisoned in Iran about May 11.
Ms. Azima, a reporter for the American-financed Radio Farda, has been stopped from leaving Iran. Mr. Jamshidi said that she was not under arrest but that she faced “the same charges” of acting against national security and spying.
Washington and Tehran are at odds over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making atomic bombs. The talks on Monday were narrowly focused on the worsening sectarian violence in Iraq and did not touch on issues like Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, which Iran says are peaceful.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran on Sunday to condemn what it said was Washington’s backing of “spy networks” inside Iran. Since the United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 over the seizure of its embassy in Tehran and the holding of hostages by Islamic militants, Switzerland represents American diplomatic interests there.
