A US academic arrested during a family visit to Iran has been accused of trying to overthrow the country’s Islamic system, stoking fears of a general crackdown against intellectuals with western ties.
Haleh Esfandiari, the Middle East director at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a prominent Washington-based thinktank, has been accused by Iran’s intelligence ministry of trying to foment a “soft revolution” by forming a network “against the sovereignty of the country”.
The accusations come after Mrs Esfandiari - who has dual US and Iranian nationality but has lived in America since 1980 - was arrested and detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison earlier this month. She had previously been under virtual house arrest for several months, and her detention on May 8 prompted a call by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, for her immediate release.
In a statement carried by official state news outlets, the intelligence ministry claimed Mrs Esfandiari, 67, had admitted cooperating with the New York-based Soros Institute, run by the billionaire financier George Soros, who has funded opposition movements in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
“In the preliminary interrogations, she said the Soros centre in Iran had an unofficial communication network and was trying to develop and expand it to follow up its ‘soft revolution’ aims,” the statement said.
It is unclear if the allegations amount to formal charges or will lead to Mrs Esfandiari being tried.
Lee Hamilton - the president of the Wilson Centre and a former Democratic congressman - dismissed the accusations as totally unfounded. “Haleh has not engaged in any activities to undermine any government, including the Iranian government,” he said. “There is not one scintilla of evidence to support these outrageous claims.”
Mrs Esfandiari’s work involved inviting prominent Iranians to talk about the political situation in the country. Last year, Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Canadian-Iranian academic, was also detained for four months under suspicion of colluding with US plans for regime change after addressing the Wilson Centre.
The accusations against Mrs Esfandiari, whose husband is Jewish, follow claims by the hardline Kayhan newspaper - thought to be close to the Iranian leadership - that she belonged to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby group.
Mrs Esfandiari’s ordeal began last December 30 after visiting her ailing 93-year-old mother. Three masked men armed with knives ambushed her car while she was on her way to Tehran airport to catch a flight to the US. Her belongings, including her passports were stolen in an apparently planned attack.
She was invited for an “interview” by an intelligence officer days later, after applying for new Iranian travel documents. That was followed by six weeks of interrogation sessions lasting up to eight hours at which she was pressured to make “false confessions” according to the Wilson Centre.
Mr Hamilton subsequently appealed to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but received no reply. After her arrest, judiciary officials said she was being investigated for “crimes against national security”. Her lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been denied access to her.
The accusations follow a series of recent arrests of Iranians with western connections as international tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme mount. This month, Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator and ambassador to Germany, was arrested on spying charges before being released on bail. Parnaz Azima, an Iranian-born journalist with the US government-funded Radio Farda, has been prevented from leaving Iran since January after her passport was confiscated.
Regime accusations against pro-democracy campaigners of pursuing a “velvet revolution” modelled on those that presaged the collapse of communism in eastern Europe have become commonplace as tensions with the west mount over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Officials have cited the Bush administration’s funding of opposition movements and Farsi-language satellite broadcasts as evidence that it is bent on overthrowing Iran’s Islamic system.
However, some critics say the arrests are really aimed at stifling domestic dissent. Mr Mousavian, a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad’s political rival, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is a vocal critic of the president’s approach on the nuclear issue.
