Rooyesh

Angry drivers set fire to at least two gasoline stations in Tehran Tuesday night after the government announced that fuel would be rationed beginning at midnight. Long lines were seen at other gas stations in the capital today as new rules took effect, limiting drivers of private cars to 26 gallons a month at the subsidized price of 34 cents a gallon. Taxicab drivers are limited to 211 gallons a month. The government is still considering whether to allow drivers to buy additional fuel at higher prices.

 Pictures of violent clashes in Tehran after government’s fuel rationing

Traffic jams developed near some stations as police officers worked to control the lines. The government first planned to start the rationing a year ago, but put the decision off repeatedly out of fear that it would spark unrest. State television reported today that “several gas stations and public places had been attacked by vandals.” One was set ablaze by protesters in the western Tehran neighborhood of Poonak and Niayesh. Another in Azadi Street in southwest Tehran was attacked, according to a report in Etemad, a daily newspaper. Iran is rich with crude oil and is the second largest exporter of oil in OPEC. But it has far fewer refineries than it needs to satisfy booming domestic demand, so it must import as much as half of its gasoline from refineries abroad, at a cost of $5 billion a year. Analysts warned that rationing would make it difficult for unemployed people who used their private cars as taxis to earn a living, and that it could accelerate inflation, which is already a problem in the country. Prices of dairy products like milk, butter and yogurt have risen by 20 percent or more this week. The Iranian economy may also be pinched by new sanctions being debated by the United Nations Security Council over Iran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The minister of oil and the minister of intelligence met privately with members of parliament to discuss the effects of the decision to ration gasoline. Afterward, the speaker. Gholamali Hadad Adel, told reporters that the parliament would back the government. “The rationing can help reduce the consumption,” Mr. Adel said, according to the parliament’s web site. “It can also make us more independent and become less vulnerable in the international community.”

Source: New York Times

Angry Iranian youths attacked a petrol station in the capital Tehran on Tuesday, burning a car and pumps after the government announced it was going to begin rationing fuel, witnesses said. The youths, who attacked the station in the Pounak area of northwest Tehran, also threw stones and shouted angry slogans denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Since the announcement earlier Tuesday of the rationing plan, which allows for only 100 litres of petrol per month for private cars, long queues started appearing at fuel pumps not only in Tehran but also in the countryside. “One car, a Peugeot Persia, was burnt inside the petrol station which was partially on fire,” an AFP journalist said after witnessing the attack in Pounak. “The demonstrators were throwing stones. Anti-riot police deployed in the neighbouring streets intervened regularly to disperse the demonstrators before pulling back,” he added. According to an Iranian journalist, another petrol station in the south of Tehran was attacked in the Azadi area. Iran’s oil ministry issued a statement earlier on Tuesday announcing that the government was launching as of the following day its long-awaited plan to ration petrol. “From midnight tonight (2030 GMT) petrol for all vehicles and motorcycles will be rationed,” state television said in an announcement quoting a ministry statement. It said private cars using just petrol would be rationed to 100 litres of petrol a month while those that used petrol and compressed natural gas (CNG) would only be allowed 30 litres. The government said rationing for privately owned cars that either only burn petrol or use petrol and CNG would continue for four months and might be extended to six months at a later date. The maximum amount of petrol allowed in total for the period was 400 liters for the petrol burning cars and 120 litres for those which consume both CNG and petrol. The statement added that quotas could be saved and used later. More than 10 days ago, Iran launched the first phase of the rationing plan, targeting only government vehicles. The plan aims to reduce colossal state petrol subsidies. “The maximum quota for each government car at the start of the programme is 10 litres per day,” an oil ministry official said at the time. He did not give details for purchases in excess of this limit but the rationing law passed by parliament in March dictates that these would be at a much higher price. The significance of the rationing law was only expected to be realised when it was enforced on private car owners, forcing Iranians to pay a higher price for a commodity that now costs less than a comparable amount of mineral water. Cheap pump prices have encouraged such consumption that the OPEC number two oil producer ironically has to spend billions of dollars each year importing petrol. Iran has already raised pump prices by 25 percent, to around 10 cents per litre, and forced consumers to use smart cards to keep track of their purchases. However, problems in distributing the cards have delayed implementation of the rest of the plan. Pumping gas into the cars is only possible when the smart card is inserted into the pumping machine.

Source: AFP

The Nobel Peace prize-winning lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, has complained to Iran’s judiciary that criminals are treated better than political prisoners. She said the fact bail for an accused rapist was set 50 times lower than for a detained reporter reflected political interference in the judiciary. Parnaz Azima, a US-Iranian journalist, was released but cannot leave Iran.

Ms Ebadi said if Iranians were silent about social justice and poverty, it was a silence of oppression, not calm. Ms Ebadi is one of the few dissenting voices in Iran still speaking out in an atmosphere where most are frightened to be critical. In a letter to the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, Ms Ebadi complained that a confessed rapist had been treated more leniently than Ms Azima, who has been accused of producing propaganda against the Islamic state. Bail was set for the Radio Free Europe journalist at $500,000 (£250,214), 50 times that of a rapist, and she had her passport confiscated. The Nobel laureate is representing another US-Iranian detainee - the 67-year-old academic, Haleh Esfandiari. However, Ms Ebadi still has not been able to see her client. She said Ms Esfandiari called her mother from jail to say she was being held in solitary confinement in stifling heat and with an injured arm. The call only lasted one minute, but Ms Esfandiari’s voice was said to be weak. The cases of four US-Iranians being detained in Iran are being closely watched from Washington. But at a seminar on peace, Mrs Ebadi also spoke of teachers, civil servants and workers arrested in Iran for demanding higher salaries. She called for the release of several students arrested for expressing their views and, in a thinly veiled criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, she said winning an election did not confer the right to rule without respect for human rights.

Source: BBC

Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces have been spotted by British troops crossing the border into southern Iraq, The Sun tabloid reported on Tuesday. Britain’s defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report, with a spokesman declining to comment on “intelligence matters”. An unidentified intelligence source told the tabloid: “It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably.

In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran — but nobody has officially declared it.” “We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us. It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot.” The Sun said that radar sightings of Iranian helicopters crossing into the Iraqi desert were confirmed to it by very senior military sources. In response to the report, a British defence ministry spokesman said: “There is evidence that explosive devices used against our troops in southern Iraq originated in Iran.” “Any Iranian link to armed militias in Iraq either through weapons supply, training or funding are unacceptable.” Britain has about 7,100 soldiers in Iraq, most of whom are based in the southern city of Basra and surrounding areas, though the government has pledged to reduce that to between 5,000 and 5,500 this year. Source: AFP

The Financial Times reports Japan’s private sector, responding to signals from Washington, is adding to financial pressure on Iran by restricting loans and rejecting an Iranian request to pay for oil imports in currencies other than the dollar, banking and official sources say. A senior banker said three big banks - Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui - had told the Iranian authorities in April that they would not conduct new business in Iran. The development puts Japanese banks in a different position to many European counterparts that have reduced dollar transactions with Iran but are still willing to conduct business in euros.

The banker, who asked not to be named, said the banks’ action followed pressure from Washington and reflected a hardening line towards Iran by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister. The banker and a Japanese energy official said Iran had also proposed to Japanese trading houses in April that they pay for Iranian oil in non-dollar currencies. This apparently reflects Iran’s concerns about the vulnerability of its dollar assets to a freeze by the US and its increasing difficulty in conducting international transactions in dollars. Trading companies declined to stop paying in dollars after consulting the Japanese government, the banker said. The energy official denied government influence, saying it was a private-sector matter. The US Treasury is at the forefront of Washington’s efforts to put pressure on Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme and alleged support for “terrorist” groups in the Middle East. Iran, which rejects the allegations, says sanctions will not stop its civilian nuclear programme. Analysts argue over the likely impact of sanctions, noting that Iran’s revenues are swelled by high oil prices. Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, says US “outreach” to the international private sector is paying dividends. In recent months the US has also stopped two Iranian banks - Sepah and Saderat - from carrying out dollar transactions with other banks.

The New York Times reports Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks. The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline.

At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions. The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using American support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as a pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers. Some analysts describe it as a “cultural revolution,” an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to try to assert itself as a regional leader. Equally noteworthy is how little has been permitted to be discussed in the Iranian news media. Instead, attention has been strategically focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political enemies, like the former president, Mohammad Khatami, and the controversy over whether he violated Islamic morals by deliberately shaking hands with an unfamiliar woman after he gave a speech in Rome. Mr. Khatami, the lost hope of Iran’s reform movement, felt compelled to rebut the accusation because such a handshake is religiously suspect, but contended that the crowd seeking to congratulate him for his speech was so tumultuous that he could not distinguish between the hands of men and women. Naturally a video clip emerged, showing the cleric in his typical gregarious style bounding over to the first woman who addressed him on the orderly sidewalk, shaking her hand and chatting amicably. The dispute over the handshake occurred during a particularly fierce round of the factional fighting that has hamstrung the country since the 1979 revolution. Far more harsh examples abound. The country’s police chief boasted that 150,000 people — a number far larger than usual — were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women’s rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women. Eight student leaders at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country’s newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests. The entire campaign is “a strong message by Ahmadinejad’s government, security and intelligence forces that they are in control of the domestic situation,” said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch. “But it’s really a sign of weakness and insecurity.” At least three prominent nongovernment organizations that pushed for broader legal rights or civil society have been shuttered outright, while hundreds more have been forced underground. A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government. Professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or having any contact with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies. The Iranian-Americans are all being detained basically on the grounds that they were either recruiting or somehow abetting an American attempt to achieve a “velvet revolution” in Iran. Analysts trace the broadening crackdown to a March speech by Ayatollah Khamenei, whose pronouncements carry the weight of law. He warned that no one should damage national unity when the West was waging psychological war on Iran. The country has been under fire, particularly from the United States, which accuses it of trying to develop nuclear weapons and fomenting violence in Iraq. President Ahmadinejad and other senior officials have dismissed all the criticism as carping. The president blames the previous administration for inflation or calls it media exaggeration, while Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, said Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic look for an excuse to criticize it. After a meeting of senior police and judiciary officials in Tehran on June 19 to review what was described as “the public security drive,” the Iranian Labor News Agency quoted Mr. Mortazavi as saying that if the state did not protect public security, then “louts” and criminals “would be safe in society. The three Iranian-Americans are being held in the notorious Section 209 of Evin Prison, the wing controlled by the Intelligence Ministry, and have been denied visits by their lawyers or relatives. Iran recognizes only their Iranian nationality and has dismissed any diplomatic efforts to intervene. A rally to demand their release is set for Wednesday outside the United Nations. The three are Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. A fourth, Parnaz Azima, a journalist who works for Radio Farda, an American-financed station based in Europe, has been barred from leaving the country. “People don’t want to come to conferences, they don’t even want to talk on the phone,” said Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University. “The regime has created an atmosphere of absolute terror.” To the political crackdown, Mr. Ahmadinejad adds a messianic fervor, Mr. Milani noted, telling students in Qom this month that the Muslim savior would soon return. The appeal of such a message may be limited, however. Iran’s sophisticated middle class wants to be connected to the world, and grumbles that the country’s only friends are Syria, Belarus, Venezuela and Cuba. But it might play well with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s main constituency. “They are the poor, the rural,” said Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They don’t travel abroad, they don’t go to conferences. He is trying to undermine the social and political position of his rivals in order to consolidate his own people.” Most ascribe Mr. Ahmadinejad’s motives to blocking what could become a formidable alliance between the camps of Mr. Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, both former presidents. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for early next year, and the next presidential vote in 2009. “Having to face a single pragmatic conservative and reform block is extremely threatening,” Mr. Nasr said, hence the intimidation of all possible supporters. Not that everyone has been intimidated. More than 50 leading economists published a harshly worded, open letter to the president saying his policies were bringing economic ruin. High unemployment persists, there has been little foreign investment and inflation is galloping, with gasoline alone jumping 25 percent this spring. Gasoline rationing is expected within a month, with consumers so anxious about it, reported the Web site Ruz, financed by the Dutch government, that skirmishes broke out in long lines at some pumps on June 17. Iran can prove a difficult country to separate into black and white. Amid all the recent oppression, for example, last week the public stoning of a couple — the punishment for adultery — was called off. Women’s rights advocates had been agitating against it. Also, two recent movies touched off controversy as too racy. One depicted an extramarital affair, and the hero of the second was an abortion doctor who drank and gambled, and yet was so beloved of the patients he had seduced that they sent him bouquets on his wedding night. In an attempt to deflect criticism that its standards had grown loose, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which vets all books, movies and gallery exhibits, issued a statement noting that both scripts had been approved under the former administration of Mr. Khatami.

As a senior adviser to the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, David Denehy is charged with overseeing the distribution of millions of dollars to advance the cause of a more democratic Iran. Affable, charming and approachable, he is bearlike in stature and manner. His voice is pleasantly rumbly; his smile is so wide that it seems to have been drawn onto his face with a crayon.

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Iran’s last post-revolution prime minister has broken years of silence to warn that poverty is threatening the basis of the Islamic republic, the media reported on Sunday. Mir Hossein Moussavi, seen as close to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, served in the now-defunct post of prime minister from 1981 to 1989, but has largely stayed out of politics ever since. In a speech quoted by most of the reformist newspapers, he complained the country was becoming immune to pictures of impoverished minors and statistics which he said showed that 20 percent of Tehran children were homeless. “It seems that we have distanced ourselves from the revolution’s vision and thoughts,” said Moussavi.

“It seems like we think that our responsibility is over. Uprooting poverty and meeting human needs, while preserving their dignity, is what the Islamic republic’s economy is based on,” he added. Moussavi, who also served as foreign minister, noted that article 43 of Iran’s constitution said it must aim to provide all the basic needs and food to its people. “The Islamic republic’s legitimacy depends on these principles. It means that this system, as long as it is an Islamic republic and accepts this constitution, cannot abandon this goal and settle for less.” Iran’s reformists — including the outgoing government — were keen for Moussavi to run for president in the 2005 elections as a popular moderate who still enjoys great legitimacy owing to his closeness to Khomeini. However he refused, for reasons that were never publicly disclosed, and conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on to thrash the more pragmatic Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the run-off. With Khomeini’s backing, the leftist Moussavi managed to haul the country through a bloody war with Iraq and international isolation. After Khomeini’s death in 1989, the post of prime minister was scrapped. His comments come at a time of increasing concern about Iran’s economy, with MPs and economists warning that the policies of Ahmadinejad risk further fuelling rising inflation. The country is also grappling with problems of unemployment for its booming youth population as well as drug addiction and juvenile delinquency.

Source: AFP

Newsweek reporter, Michael Hirsh, reports from Tehran. “So, is America going to attack us?” asked the grinning young tough at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, a vast labyrinth of well-stocked shops where he was idling with four of his friends, one of whom was a slightly older man dressed in militant black. I had approached them as an American journalist on my second day in Iran, hoping to record a little vox populi on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical Iranian president.

Somewhat startled to have the tables turned on me so quickly, I said I didn’t know for sure, but no, most likely we wouldn’t attack. My response provoked a testosterone-filled round of chest-thumping and chortling. The black shirt, whose name was Hassan Mirzaie, recounted his experience as a soldier in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. He told an obscene joke about how tough even the female Iraqi commandos were back then. Hassan’s friends laughed loudly. “If I can handle the Iraqis, I can handle the Americans,” Hassan said. “We faced a very rough enemy, and they committed many atrocities, but we managed to defeat them.” For good measure, he added that he’d recently been to Iraq on a “religious pilgrimage” and had seen how bogged down the U.S. military was. “The Americans can’t do anything to us.” Message to George W. Bush: if you’re going to strike Iran, a country nearly three times the size of Iraq with 70 million people, it had better be with something a lot bigger than “shock and awe.” Both the Iranian regime and many of its people, including the five comrades I talked to at the bazaar, seem fairly confident that Bush can’t and won’t. Apparently they’re reading many of the same Western media reports that we are—about how Bush has no army left with which to invade. About how air strikes alone can’t reach Iran’s main underground facility at Natanz, which is buried under 100 meters of concrete and dirt and whose entrance makes a U-turn underground that would likely foil a cruise missile. And about how Iran could, in retaliation, inflict terrible casualties (using its Shiite Iraqi proxies, and perhaps Sunni insurgents, too) on the U.S. troops next door in Iraq. The Iranian regime has been regurgitating many of these stories to the populace through state-controlled TV and radio, and even the many Iranians who don’t like Ahmadinejad (among them, Hassan) tend to see him as someone who’s standing up to a country they increasingly view as a bruised and battered giant. Ahmadinejad “is the only president we’ve had who has known how to use power,” said one shopkeeper, Majid Rezai. “He isn’t afraid of anybody.” Even firm opponents of Ahmadinejad and his radical conservative movement say the neocons and hardliners back in Washington who still harbor hopes that U.S. strikes will weaken the regime are dreaming dangerous fantasies. The opposite, they say, is certain to happen: Iranians will rally around him. Inured to sanctions after 25 years, toughened by war (almost as prevalent on billboards around Tehran as the paintings of the revered Ayatollah Khomeini are pictures of “martyrs” from that 1980-88 war, which Iran said resulted in nearly 200,000 casualties), many Iranians tend to laugh at U.S. efforts to promote regime change. “If America wants to fix anything, let it fix itself. Look at what happened after [Hurricane] Katrina,” said another shopkeeper, Mehdi Douri, who has obviously been keeping up on his propaganda as well. Even more than in Iraq, the prospect of U.S.-sponsored regime change brings back ugly memories that only vindicate, in Iranian eyes, the Islamist government’s portrayal of America as the Great Satan. Iran’s modern political mythology began in 1953, when the CIA and Great Britain allegedly aided the ouster of the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh and installed Reza Palahvi as the Shah of Iran. “The memory of 1953 in Iran is still very vivid,” Ebrahim Yazdi, a reformist politician who also opposes Ahmadinejad, told me in his spacious living room, with a pool visible out back. “Many Iranians cannot forget that U.S. and British coup actually suffocated the democratic process in Iran at a very embryonic stage. No. 2, during the 25 years of the Shah’s regime, the U.S. was directly involved in what he was doing. And when Iraq attacked Iran, the U.S. fully and militarily supported the Saddam regime. They all knew Saddam was the aggressor, and yet they did it.” Khomeini and his followers, in fact, artfully used this political mythology to launch their Islamic revolution. And the likely result of any U.S. attack on Iran would be to revive the radicalism that Bush hopes will fade away. My tour through the shops as well as the homes and offices of Tehran’s elite suggests to me that change for the better will come when America loosens, rather than tightens, its grip. We may indeed have to accept some uranium-enrichment capacity; outside of Washington, even many European diplomats agree that it is not yet certain the Iranians want to go all the way to building a bomb right now. As Mohammed El Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently suggested, it may be time for the West to acknowledge what Iran has already built at Natanz and cut a deal that, with the right kind of intrusive inspections, will keep them from fully arming. Only the same kind of approach—full U.S. engagement—will blunt Iran’s efforts to undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq and now, apparently, in Afghanistan. Tehran’s reported efforts to arm the Taliban as well as Iraq’s Shiite militias reflects classic Iranian tactics of going at enemies indirectly, using proxies. Most of the Iranians I talk to—again, even opponents of Ahmadinejad—agree that keeping the United States bogged down will remain a consummate Iranian national interest as long as Tehran has a hostile Washington breathing down its neck. The possibility of winning over the Iranians, rather than facing them down, was another thing that became apparent to me in my conversation with the five friends at the bazaar. Remember the young fellow who asked if Bush was going to attack? Well, as I was leaving, he called out to me: “Can you get me a visa to America?” No, I said, I didn’t think I could, but why do you want to go? “To join the Army, fight al Qaeda,” he said, grinning again. I gave him a thumbs up and walked away. That, anyway, is the message from the bazaar.

The detention of four Iranian-Americans in Tehran on charges of spying has left many Iranian-Americans in the United States wondering whether visiting Iran this summer would be wise. Iranian-Americans, many of whom have dual citizenship, generally travel back to their native country with relative freedom despite periodic swells in tension and tough talk between Iran and the U.S. But the recent arrests — including of a peace activist and an academic who were visiting their mothers — has some concerned that Iran is now targeting ordinary people.

“When you have these arrests that come across as so arbitrary and unjustified, it does make everyone else very timid,” said Trita Parsi, president of the Washington-based National Iranian-American Council. In late May, the State Department issued an updated travel warning to U.S. citizens — and Iranian-Americans in particular — about potential harassment in Iran and trouble leaving the country. The warning, which cited the detentions, advised Iranian-Americans to “consider the risk of being targeted by authorities before planning to travel to Iran.” Reaction among Iranian-Americans has been mixed. Some shrug off the warnings, saying these types of flare-ups between the countries have occurred before. But the detentions have been especially chilling for Iranian-American academics, many of whom have joined petitions protesting the case against Haleh Esfandiari, a Middle East scholar at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Iran alleges that Esfandiari is part of a larger plot by the U.S. to use scholars to foment a “soft” revolution in Iran, toppling the Islamic government by opening up Iran to the West. She and the other three Iranian-Americans face charges of endangering national security. Academics have postponed trips to Iran for fear of being detained, said Hamid Akbari, a professor of management at Northeast Illinois University and former executive director of the International Society for Iranian Studies. “Most Iranian scholars and activists are quite cautious at this time,” Akbari wrote in an e-mail. Detained along with Esfandiari are Kian Tajbakhsh with George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and Ali Shakeri, a peace activist and founding board member at the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peace building. Journalist Parnaz Azima from the U.S.-funded Radio Farda is out of jail on bail but not allowed to leave the country. An Iranian judiciary spokesman said last week that a judge would soon decide whether they will be indicted or released. The 2000 Census estimated that there were 330,000 Americans of Iranian descent living in the U.S. Many came around the time of the Iranian Revolution, which culminated in the 1979 toppling of the Shah of Iran and the establishment of a theocratic government. They include the shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who lives near Washington. Esfandiari was visiting her 93-year-old mother in Tehran when she was taken into custody. And the summer school vacation is a time when some Iranian families take their children back to see family. “I don’t know of anybody who is planning to go that has canceled because of this,” said Hossein Hosseini, a former board member of the Network of Iranian American Professionals of Orange County. “The summer season is pretty big with a lot of people in the community.” Even those who left for political reasons still maintain their Iranian citizenship, which must be formally renounced under Iranian law. It means Iranian-Americans can enter Iran without a visa, making travel easier. But the country’s hard-line government also used it as a pretext to detain the four Iranian-Americans, saying they are subject to that nation’s laws despite their American citizenship. The detentions have prompted speculation, said Hossein Hejdazi, the program director and talk show host at the Los Angeles Farsi radio station KIRN-AM. Theories being bandied about include that Iran is using the prisoners as a bargaining chip because of the American military’s detention of Iranians found in Iraq, or Iranian suspicion of a $75 million (€56 million) State Department program to encourage democracy in Iran. Hejdazi says he is urging Iranian-Americans to be cautious about going to Iran. “We are telling people don’t just go if it is not urgent,” he said. “Postpone it until we can see what direction it goes.”

Source: Associated Press