Six months ago, Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an FP contributor, went to Iran to visit her ailing mother. She never returned home. Instead, Esfandiari was detained, questioned, thrown into Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, and accused of endangering national security. For this week’s Seven Questions, FP spoke with Shaul Bakhash, Esfandiari’s husband, about the detention of his wife and three other Iranian-Americans.
FOREIGN POLICY: How often did Dr. Esfandiari travel to Iran, and when did you first realize that she was in serious trouble?
Shaul Bakhash: Haleh has been going to Iran a couple times a year for the past decade, ever since her mother, due to age and a heart attack, was not able to travel. On December 30, Haleh was in Tehran on her way to the airport to fly back to Washington, D.C., when her car was stopped by knife-wielding masked men who took away all of her belongings, including her passports. [Esfandiari is a dual citizen of Iran and the United States.] When she started applying for new travel documents, the Intelligence Ministry began an interrogation that lasted over the next six weeks. I spoke to her fairly regularly during that time, although obviously we were cautious on the phone. We exchanged e-mails regularly as well. But then the questioning stopped. And for 10 weeks, Haleh heard nothing until she was summoned back to the Intelligence Ministry on the morning of May 8. When she showed up, she was sent immediately to Evin prison.
FP: What are the actual charges against her?
SB: Statements first issued by the minister of intelligence initially implicated the Wilson Center—but interestingly enough, not Haleh directly—in a U.S. government plan to bring about a “velvet” revolution in Iran. But soon after, the government upped the ante and stated that Haleh was accused of espionage and actions against the national security, and propaganda against the Islamic Republic. Even today, though, it’s not clear whether they are official charges or, more likely, accusations made by the ministry.
Obviously the charges are totally without foundation. They are fabrications. The Ministry of Intelligence hasn’t produced a shred of evidence to support any of them.
If we are to believe statements by government officials, the case of Parnaz Azima [of U.S.-backed Radio Farda, who was detained but has since been released on bond] is ready to go to trial. My wife, Haleh, Kian Tajbakhsh, who is a consultant to [financier George Soros’s] Open Society Institute, and Ali Shakeri, an academic and a democracy activist, have been in Evin prison since early May. One can say with confidence that the charges against all four are totally unfounded.
FP: Your family has retained the services of attorney and activist Shirin Ebadi, the winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. She herself was once incarcerated in Evin prison. Has she been able to make contact with your wife?
SB: Shirin Ebadi went to the Revolutionary Court, which is handling Haleh’s case, two days after a judiciary spokesperson said that she could represent her. But she was not given a meeting with the prosecutor handling the case, or even allowed into the building. The interrogator refused to accept the power of attorney that Ms. Ebadi had and therefore refused to allow her to look at the file. In the several weeks since then, Shirin Ebadi tried twice more to secure a meeting with the interrogator handling the case, but did not succeed. The interrogator even said, “Haleh Esfandiari does not need a lawyer.”
FP: Has anyone heard from Dr. Esfandiari? What are conditions like in the prison?
SB: Haleh has been allowed to make very brief phone calls to her mother in Tehran. These calls last barely a minute, and nothing of substance can be said during them. Our assumption is that there is always a minder standing behind her. But we have absolutely no information on what is going on inside the prison. Our assumption is that she’s still in solitary confinement. Shirin Ebadi describes the cells of Evin prison as very small. Prisoners in this particular security ward sleep on a blanket, not a mattress. Interrogation methods involve intimidation and threats, often fabrications designed to disorient and frighten the detainee. Obviously the aim is often to coerce a false confession from the detainee.
Haleh is 67 years old. She has a fairly serious eye problem, macular degeneration, which requires constant monitoring, and she hasn’t been able to see her eye doctor since she was stopped from leaving Iran. She also has a bone condition which needs monitoring, and we’re not sure whether she has the medications she needs in Evin prison. On one occasion, when her mother tried to deliver some pills that she needs, they refused to accept delivery at the prison gate. Her mother is 93 years old, and we are also very worried about her anxiety and her mental and physical condition as a result of this incarceration.
FP: Why do you think the Iranian government has decided to make these arrests now? Is it in retaliation for the United States detaining five Iranians in Iraq in January?
SB: It’s almost useless to speculate about the Iranian government’s intentions, or, more specifically, about the intentions of the Ministry of Intelligence. The operations of the ministry are opaque; the line of questioning and interrogations to which Haleh was subjected suggests that they haven’t the least idea what an organization like the Wilson Center does, and that they made assumptions both about the Wilson Center and my wife not after they had conducted an investigation, but before.
FP: And how do you think the U.S. government is handling the situation in return?
SB: Because the U.S. doesn’t have any direct relations with Iran, it really has to work through its allies and friends among governments that do have relations with Iran. It’s doing its best to try and get Haleh released through these channels.
On the other hand, misguided U.S. policies in the past—loose talk about regime change in Iran or the allocation of funds to support Iranian dissidents and democracy advocates—have merely fed the paranoia of the Iranian regime about American intentions. I’m sorry to say that part of the problem that Haleh and other Iranian-Americans face in Iran today stems, in part, anyway, from these misguided policies. Obviously the allocation [by the U.S. State Department in 2006] of $60 to $70 million for democracy promotion of various sorts in Iran is an issue about which the Iranian government is very sensitive and very anxious. And some of the detainees have been accused, quite wrongly, of receiving that money.
FP: What do you think is the best solution to this dilemma?
SB: I think that the fairest resolution, both for Haleh and in the best interests of the Iranian government, is that Haleh should be released unconditionally and all charges dropped. It’s ironic that my wife should be charged with doing harm to the Islamic Republic when officials of the government of Iran have done enormous harm to Iran’s international standing and earned Iran universal condemnation by this arrest and incarceration. People can help by signing their names to the Free Haleh Web site at www.freehaleh.org. We are also planning a vigil in front of the United Nations in New York at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on June 27 from noon to 1 p.m. The more people who can show up for that vigil, the stronger the protest against her continuing incarceration will be.
Shaul Bakhash is Haleh Esfandiari’s husband and professor of history at George Mason University.
