An Iranian-American scholar interrogated over more than five months and then jailed in Iran beyond the reach of diplomats “has never been a spy,” says the director of the organization where she worked in Washington.
“Iran is trying to turn a scholar into a spy,” said Lee H. Hamilton, president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He spoke at a news conference on Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained Dec. 30 as she was about to return to the Washington area after a visit to her ailing 93-year-old mother.
The 67-year-old Iranian-American woman, who heads the center’s Middle East program and lives in Potomac, Md., is being charged according to Iranian television, which often speaks for the government, with “seeking to topple the ruling Islamic establishment.”
Hamilton said, “Haleh is a scholar and has never been a spy.”
He described her program as one of promoting dialogue with Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, and said in response to a question that she did not pursue such activities on her visit to Tehran, which began Dec. 21.
Threats were made during her questioning, Hamilton said, but “she was not beaten, to our knowledge.” Since she was jailed in Evin prison on May 8 “no one has seen her to our knowledge,” he said.
Her mother was permitted to deliver medicine to the prison, while Swiss diplomats, who look after U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of formal relations, were not permitted to visit with Esfandiari, Hamilton said.
On Monday, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is due to hold direct talks in Baghdad with Iranian diplomats. The Bush administration has said the talks would be entirely about the situation in Iraq, while Crocker has been quoted as saying they could lead to an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “It is sort of mind-boggling to me that we can have discussions that mean more to Iranians than to us while there is a hostage crisis going on.”
“And we are not even going to mention the hostage,” Takeyh said in an interview. “If I were in charge of the U.S. government I would say to them privately we are going to review that meeting so long as she is being held.”
Geoffrey Kemp, director of regional programs at the Nixon Center, said in a separate interview, “There is nothing inconsistent in holding bilateral talks with Iran on mutual interests in Iraq while at the same time putting maximum moral and diplomatic pressure on Iran to release a completely innocent scholar who has done much to improve U.S.-Iranian relations.”
The Wilson Center was established by Congress in 1968 and is supported through private and public funds, according to its Web site.
