Iranian-American public intellectual Haleh Esfandiari provided insight into the complex relations between the United States and Iran Tuesday, Jan. 19, at Xavier University’s Cintas Center.
Esfandiari, who was born in Tehran and has dual citizenship in Iran and the United States, focused her presentation titled: “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran” on her memoir of the same name as well as current Iran-U.S. relations.
As a 67-year-old woman, she was held in Iran and imprisoned in solitary confinement at Evin Prison for 105 days in 2007.
Her story began Dec. 31, 2006 when, following one of her frequent visits to her elderly mother in Iran, the taxi carrying her to the airport was forced off of the highway by another vehicle.
Three men descended on the taxi and threatened Esfandiari, stealing her belongings
including both her Iranian and American passports.
In the months that followed, Esfandiari was trapped in Iran as she fought through a tangled mess of bureaucratic red tape in an effort to replace her stolen documents. She was
arrested on charges of “endangering national security.”
Esfandiari is employed by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as the Director of its Middle East Program. Iran’s Intelligence Ministry used her work there to subvert the Iranian government.
