Bad Times for Iranian-Americans in Iran
It is not a particularly opportune moment, it appears, for Iranian-Americans to be visiting Iran.
In recent months, four Iranian-Americans are known to have been detained by Iran's security services. Three have been accused of endangering Iran's security and of espionage—allegations that they, their families, and their employers have denied. A fourth Iranian-American has been detained and is said to be under investigation on security-related issues.
The detention of the four appears to be a byproduct of worsening U.S.-Iranian tensions, though officials in Tehran have said the legal issues are not linked to anything other than alleged misdeeds. The Iranian government does not recognize dual citizenship, and after President Bush recently called for the quartet to be freed "immediately and unconditionally," Tehran in essence told Washington to butt out. The Bush administration says the four are not spies or U.S. government employees. But there is an indisputable sense of vulnerability: On a typical day, there are thousands of Iranian-Americans visiting Iran.
Lurking in the background of this new trouble between Washington and Tehran is a $75 million U.S. fund to promote democracy in the Islamic republic. As a routine, U.S. officials do not identify which individuals or groups receive the money, but the Iranians apparently suspect that at least some of the four are among them. The Americans being detained are Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Parnaz Azima, a journalist with U.S.-funded Radio Farda; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning specialist affiliated with George Soros's Open Society Institute; and an American who apparently has not yet been formally charged, Ali Shakeri, who helped found the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California-Irvine.
A fifth American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, disappeared on a private business trip to Iran in March. Iranian officials have not disclosed his status.
Iran—and particularly its hard-line officials—have eyed the fund as part of a Washington strategy to engineer a "soft revolution" akin to the Orange Revolution that toppled an authoritarian government in Ukraine more than two years ago. Critics of the administration democracy program predicted last year, when it was launched, that dissidents would feel the wrath of the Iranian government in response.
And the arrests of the Americans are taking place amid a broader, domestic crackdown waged by the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The targets of late include women said to be wearing insufficient head coverings, opposition student groups, labor unions, and even banks. Says a State Department official of the campaign: "They're beating, harassing, and torturing activists who are just Iranian—not Iranian-Americans. They have the most appalling human rights record imaginable."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with the Associated Press, indicated that the arrests of the Americans would not derail a recent decision to engage Iranian officials on the issue of stabilizing Iraq or change the U.S. position of seeking multilateral talks with Iran over its nuclear program, if it first suspends producing nuclear fuel. Rice's stances did not sit well with Iran watchers who advocate elevating human-rights concerns in the pantheon of U.S.-Iranian issues. Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic, called Rice's comment "a shameful moment in American diplomacy."
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