WASHINGTON — Iran on Tuesday jailed an Iranian-American director at a prominent U.S. think tank in Washington after forcing her to remain in the country for more than four months.
The incident is part of a pattern of harassment of Iranian-Americans and Iranian exiles who visit Iran, said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran expert at Human Rights Watch.
The arrest of Haleh Esfandiari, 67, was announced by her employer, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The center said Iranian officials had not given any reason for her arrest or said whether she would face charges. She is being held at Tehran’s Evin prison.
Esfandiari, who has headed the Wilson Center’s Middle East program for nearly a decade, has brought Iranians with a range of political views to speak there. “They know she’s not political,” Ghaemi said.
The center receives federal funding as well as private money and conducts research on international relations, history and political science. It has “no legislative or policy agenda,” said its president, Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.
Hamilton said Esfandiari traveled to Iran in December to visit her mother. On the way to Tehran’s airport, she was robbed at knifepoint of her belongings, including her Iranian and U.S. passports.
When she applied for a new Iranian passport — which Iranian-Americans are required to use when visiting Iran — she was referred to security officials who interrogated her about her work and pressured her to confess to having “engaged in subversive activities,” Hamilton said. She refused.
Esfandiari’s family and the Wilson Center had kept the matter from becoming public until Tuesday in hopes that the Iranian government would allow her to leave. Hamilton said he wrote to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in February and urged him to work for her release, and appealed to Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif. Ahmadinejad did not reply, but Zarif “indicated that he wanted to be helpful,” Hamilton said. Zarif would not comment.
Hamilton said he had not sought help from the Bush administration because of strained relations between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. accusations that Iran is meddling in Iraq.
Ghaemi said the arrests of Esfandiari and others appear to be part of a power struggle. Ahmadinejad and anti-Western figures in the government are battling less hard-line figures such as former president Mohammed Khatami.
Parnaz Azima, an Iranian-American working at U.S. government-financed Radio Farda, has been unable to leave Iran since her passport was confiscated in January. Radio Farda broadcasts news and music into Iran.
Human Rights Watch said Iranian security forces also have been confiscating passports of Iranian citizens attempting to travel to international conferences on journalism and human rights.
