U.S. says fourth Iranian American detained in Iran

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

Thu May 31, 2007 11:43am ET

(Reuters) - Iran has detained a fourth Iranian American, California businessman Ali Shakeri, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday, calling his arrest a "disturbing pattern" of harassment of dual citizens.

"He has also been taken into custody by Iranian officials," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters, saying he believed Shakeri had been detained about 10 days ago and was being held in Tehran's Evin prison.

Shakeri is the fourth Iranian American to be detained, imprisoned or otherwise barred from leaving Iran in recent months in a series of incidents that U.S. diplomats fear may herald a further deterioration in U.S.-Iranian relations.

The other three -- academic Haleh Esfandiari, social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh and journalist Parnaz Azima -- have been charged with spying, a charge which could carry the death sentence under Iran's Islamic sharia law.



Read more: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-05-31T154455Z_01_N31196292_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-USA.xml

[mrcheerful]

1. So Iran is doing what america refuses to do, gather up anyone with ties to the enemy

and find out if they are spies or disruptors. Yeah I know america plays by a different set of rules, unless they decide to over look the rules they don't want to abide by.

[snappyturtle]

2. I think this recent seizing of Iranian/Americans is due to the fact

the U.S. is holding Iranians they seized in Iraq...tit for tat.

[Norquist Nemesis]

3. There were reports quite a while ago that the Bush Regime

was conducting covert ops within Iran designed to prop up another one of those "people's revolution" type of overthrow. We've been funding groups within Iran and calling them pro-democracy or some such drivel.

As bad as Iran is, they would be stupid to just ignore the shenanigans of Bushetals from within their borders.

[High Plains]

4. The publicly announced "covert operation" to destabilize Iran...

...makes it awfully easy for Iran to justify rounding these people up.

[Kagemusha]

5. I think various overt things easily used as cover for covert aren't helping.

Because the overt things include academics and therefore Iran can - perhaps quite thinly and unjustly, mind you - justify rounding some of them up and using them as examples. Then Blair and Rice piously denounce such actions and say, OUR detainees are detained for real reasons, YOUR detainees are being held unjustly. Works in the West - somewhat - but plays very poorly in the Middle East, which the Iranians know all too well.