Haleh Esfandiari

Dr. Haleh Esfandiari (b. 1940) is an Iranian American academic and the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.. Her areas of expertise include Middle Eastern women's issues, contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, and democratic developments in the Middle East, and she frequently writes, lectures, and organizes symposia on these topics.

Esfandiari earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna and has lived in the United States since 1980, having left Iran at the time of the Iranian Revolution. She holds dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship.

She has served as the Deputy Secretary General of the Women's Organization of Iran, journalist, a Fellow at the Wilson Center from 1995-1996, an educator in the Near Eastern Studies department of Princeton University from 1980-1994. She has also worked as a journalist and has been a frequent lecturer on current Iranian affairs. She has served as director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center for nearly 10 years.

She is the author of Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution (1997) and a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant.

Esfandiari is married to Shaul Bakhash, a professor at George Mason University.

Detention in Iran

On December 30, 2006, Dr. Esfandiari was robbed at knifepoint by three men while on the way to the airport after visiting her ailing 93-year-old mother in Tehran, Iran, whom she had visited approximately twice per year over the past decade. During this incident, the men threatened to kill her and her baggage and both her U.S. and Iranian passports were stolen, and she was not permitted to leave the country. When she applied for new travel documents, she was instead barred from leaving Iran and interrogated for up to eight hours per day over a period of several weeks (until February 14) by authorities from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. These interrogations, which totaled approximately 50 hours, took place in the Ministry's offices on Africa Street in Tehran, and at its main building on Khaje Abdollah Ansari Street in Tehran, and focused primarily on her work at the Wilson Center, according to a statement from the Center. During this time, she was allowed to return home each day. In a statement released on May 10, 2007 by the Wilson Center, Esfandiari "was pressured to make a false confession or to falsely implicate the Wilson Center in activities in which it had no part." In early May, she was asked again to confess to taking part in anti-government activities, which she refused to do.

On May 7, 2007, she was told to report to the Ministry of Intelligence. Upon her arrival there on the morning of May 8, she was taken into custody and driven to Tehran's Evin Prison, becoming the third dual U.S.-Iranian citizen to be detained by the Iranian government under similar circumstances in 2007 (the others being Radio Farda correspondent Parnaz Azima, whose passport was confiscated in January while also visiting her sick mother; and another who does not wish to be identified). Another academic, Ramin Jahanbegloo, was similarly arrested and held for four months in Evin Prison in 2006, and a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, has been missing in Iran since he disappeared in March 2007.

Since her detention, Esfandiari has been allowed to make two brief telephone calls (both to her mother), and although her mother attempted to visit her in prison, she was turned away.

Until the announcement of Esfandiari's detention, both Bakhash and the Wilson Center chose not to publicize her case, hoping that, by keeping quiet, her travel documents would eventually be returned and she would be allowed to return to the United States. In February 2007 the Center's president, the former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, sent letters to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, in which he asked for assistance in obtaining Esfandiari's release; Ahmadinejad did not reply, but Zarif "indicated that he wanted to be helpful." Following reports of her detention on May 9, 2007, both Bakhash and the Wilson Center gave statements to the press regarding the situation. Iran did not immediately confirm that Esfandiari is being detained. The U.S. State Department has called for her release. On May 11, 2007, U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and three federal legislators (Senators Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen) called for Esfandiari's release. There is a campaign on http://www.freehaleh.org underway demanding the release of Dr Esfandiari with a petition initiated by the American Islamic Congress and the Middle East Youth Network.

References

• Middle East Program at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• "Haleh Esfandiari" (html). Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 12/11/2006. Retrieved 2007-05-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "Iran Detains Iranian-American Scholar". All Things Considered. National Public Radio. May 9, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-11. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

External links

• Wilson Center statement, May 10, 2007

See also

• Zahra Kazemi
• Ramin Jahanbegloo
• Robert Levinson