Condoleezza Rice made it easier for Iran to crackdown on potential spies

[dajoki]

Crackdown in Iran
H. Abrishami
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/abrishami

On May 8 in Tehran, Haleh Esfandiari, the 67-year-old Middle East director of Washington's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was taken away to Evin Prison. She had been in Iran on one of her yearly trips to see her 93-year-old mother when in December, while en route to the airport, she was stopped at knife-point by masked men, who seized her passports (she is a dual US-Iranian national). Since then she has endured torturous interrogations, sometimes for up to eight hours on end. Esfandiari, who refused to confess to taking part in anti-government activities, faces vague charges of being part of US efforts at a "soft overthrow" of the regime.

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One may offer that there is nothing new about this particular moment. After all, for twenty-seven years the Iranian regime has justified attacks on its opponents by linking them to the West. But when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a $75 million appropriation to support Iranian civil society in February 2006, she made the regime's job far easier. Suddenly, everyone became a potential spy or recipient of US funds.

The irony is that it is unlikely that any of the $75 million has actually entered Iran. Most has gone to Persian-language broadcasting based in the States, and a fraction has gone to US-based NGOs. It certainly did not go to the three arrested these past weeks. The Wilson Center received no State Department money, nor was it part of any "Zionist conspiracy," as Iranian newspapers imply. And Tajbakhsh's activities with OSI were thoroughly transparent and given an official Iranian government permit.

It is in fact Iranian activists who have been the most vociferous critics of Rice's program. Homegrown initiatives such as the "one million signatures" campaign are proof that one does not need money or vows of regime change to create a successful grassroots movement. The campaign, which pushes for modest changes in the women's legal code, requires only a pen, paper and a photocopy machine to go about its work.

Still, the regime is cracking down on precisely the people who are working within the parameters of the system. They are not revolutionaries. They are not foreign agents. By silencing them the government plays straight into the hands of the hard-liners in Washington who delight in fantasies of military action.

[Supersedeas]

1. things her Sovietology program did not teach her