An American scholar who paid a personal price for the poor relations between the US and Iran says she is confident the divisions will be overcome.
This week Iranians go to the polls to vote for their next president.
Iran’s leader will be challenged by the new approach from the new US President Barack Obama who has just wound up a trip to the Middle East where he reached out to the Arab and Muslim world.
Haleh Esfandiari, from US think tank the Woodrow Wilson Centre, has told the ABC’s Sunday Profile of her ordeal in a Tehran prison, and why she thinks divisions between the US and Iran will be overcome.
Because of her US job, Iranians suspected Dr Esfandiari was fermenting revolution, and in 2007 she was arrested in Tehran while visiting her mother.
Dr Esfandiari spent four months in Evin Prison, where she says she was interrogated at length by Iran’s intelligence department.
“Some days it was eight hours and nine hours, other days it was maybe five hours and it went on for four months on and off,” she said.
“I mean no interrogation is pleasant and especially if you are in the hands of the officers of the Intelligence Ministry it’s not at all pleasant.
“You walk in, a door is closed behind you and you don’t know whether you will walk out.”
Despite her ordeal Dr Esfandiari says she feels optimistic about Iran’s future and its future relationship with the United States, ushered by new US President Barack Obama.
“The [Iranian] government always had an enmity with the United States, while in the rest of the Persian Gulf states and the rest of the region you had leaders who were close allies of the United States and the people who didn’t care much about the US,” she said.
“But I think that changed when Barack Obama became President.
“So whatever he’s going to say is going to resonate across the Muslim world.”
Listen to Monica Attard’s full interview with Haleh Esfandiari on ABC Radio Local Radio’s Sunday Profile at 9:05 pm AEST.
