This month did not bring the happy Mother’s Day that Haleh Bakhash, 40, of Washington, D.C., had once anticipated--not with her mother Haleh Esfandiari, languishing unjustly in an Iranian jail.
The last time Bakhash saw her mom was in December, just before Esfandiari flew off to Iran for what was supposed to be a brief visit to her own mother, 93. A noted Iranian American scholar, Esfandiari was planning to return to the United States from Tehran at the end of December, but on her way to the airport she was intercepted “at knifepoint, by three masked men,” Haleh Bakhash tells Glamour. The men threatened to kill her. “Her passport and belongings were taken away from her and she was told to report to the Ministry of Intelligence,” Bakhash says.
Esfandiari was put under virtual house arrest--intimidated by authorities into remaining within the confines of her mother’s home for the next four months--and interrogated on a regular basis by the government, “sometimes for eight hours a day,” says Bakhash. The Iranians wanted to know about the program Esfandiari runs at Washington D.C.'s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she directs the Middle East program and often brings in Iranian experts to discuss that country’s situation. According to The Washington Post, American observers believe that the Iranian government, incensed by the Bush administration’s recent plans to promote democracy in Iran, was trying to find a link between the Wilson Center and antigovernment activists. The Wilson Center, however, is nonpartisan and does not engage in political activity.
From late December through May, Bakhash and her two young daughters spoke to Esfandiari by phone several times a week. That connection has now been severed. On May 8, Esfandiari was sent to Iran’s notorious Evin prison. She remains there, captive and unable to communicate with the outside world--with the exception of one brief call to her mother. Her situation has caught the attention of the U.S. government. Says The Washington Post: “The United States has not faced such tension over Americans held in Iran since the 1979-1981 hostage crisis.” Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) have issued statements calling for Esfandiari’s release. Bakhash’s father, Shaul Bakhash, a professor of Middle East history at George Mason University, has said, “Whatever they think my wife did seems to be in their imagination. I hope they [the Iranian government] realize that they made this mistake and let her return to her family.”
More personally, Bakhash misses and fears for her mother, but she believes Esfandiari will persevere. “She always said to me, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you that because you’re a woman, you can’t do anything as well as a man.” In the meantime, this humane, respected scholar is in a cell in a frightening jail, for no reason. No Mothers Day flower delivery there. Several human rights groups are keeping an eye on Esfandiari’s case; check sites such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in coming days to see what can be done.
