More than a year ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revealed plans to spend $75 million to promote democracy inside Iran. Much of that was intended to improved radio and satellite television programs beamed into that country and for fellowships and scholarships for Iranian students.
As these sorts of things go, $75 million isn’t all that much. But the intent behind it — to support real democracy in Iran, not the farce perpetrated by the mullahs who run the country — is apparently making a paranoid regime even more paranoid.
Case in point: Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian-American academic who is director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Last year, Esfandiari traveled to Tehran to visit her ailing 93-year-old mother. She’d made the trip before. But this time, she wasn’t allowed to leave. For more than four months, she was repeatedly interrogated by Iranian authorities. They wanted her to confess to having “engaged in subversive activities,” says Lee Hamilton, president of the Wilson center.
She refused. Finally, last week, she was tossed into a notorious prison for not “cooperating.” Translated: She wouldn’t confess to something she hadn’t done. On Tuesday, Iran’s judiciary said she was being investigated for “crimes against national security.” A few days earlier, a hard-line Iranian newspaper was more specific: It accused Esfandiari of spying for the U.S. and Israel and of trying to stir a revolution inside Iran.
There are several theories about what’s behind her arrest. Esfandiari may be caught in a power struggle between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the former president of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani. Another theory: The government, spooked by Rice’s $75 million ante, has grown more suspicious of academics as the leading wave of a democracy movement.
Esfandiari has had a particular interest in empowering women in Iran, Iraq and the rest of the region. She helped organize conferences about Iran’s nuclear program and the future of the reform movement. Her arrest may be a warning to others that anyone who promotes democracy or free speech for Iran, even if they do it from afar, is not safe.
It’s spring in Iran, a time when a hard-line Islamic regime’s thoughts turn to repression and crackdowns. These days the Modesty Police roam the streets of Tehran, stopping women who dress inappropriately. Their targets: women who wear small head scarves or short, tight coats or cosmetics or bright nail polish or large sunglasses or short socks … just about anything that may be deemed un-Islamic. Most get a warning, which is better than it was in the early days of the Islamic revolution. Then, violators were fined, jailed and flogged.
We can understand why the rulers of Iran are sensitive. They’re driving the country deeper and deeper into isolation — with two sets of UN sanctions in place and more likely coming — all to keep an outlaw nuclear program going. Despite the country’s oil wealth, the Iranian economy is feeble; the good times promised by Ahmadinejad haven’t materialized, and never will without serious market reforms.
Many Iranians are increasingly restive. The mullahs may think tossing an accomplished scholar in jail for visiting her elderly mother is a sign of strength. From here, all we see is fear.
