Update on Haleh Esfandiari

The Washpost's Robin Wright, one of the keenest American observers of Iran, has an excellent piece today on Haleh Esfandiari, who Wright calls a "hostage." Esfandiari, an Iranian-American who heads the prestigious Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson center in Washington, was detained in Tehran this month and is being investigated for "crimes against national security."

Check out Wright's article, but here's the essence:

Esfandiari is a most unlikely hostage.

A birdlike powerhouse of a woman, weighing in at barely 100 pounds, the 67-year-old academic has quietly run the Middle East program at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for almost a decade. Few American scholars have done more than Esfandiari, a Shiite Muslim, to advocate "open debate and dialogue" between two countries that have been at odds for almost three decades, according to Wilson Center director and former congressman Lee Hamilton.

"The U.S.-Iranian relationship suffers from more than a quarter-century of no dialogue and no talks. She wanted bridges, not walls. She wanted people to talk, not dictate. She wanted people to listen and learn, not filibuster and spin," says Hamilton, who also co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, which urged the Bush administration to engage with Iran to help stabilize Iraq.

Iran's leading hard-line newspaper, Kayhan, now a mouthpiece for Ahmadinejad's government, alleged last week that Esfandiari was fomenting a "velvet revolution" in Iran and spying for the United States and Israel. Kayhan was, ironically, the place were Esfandiari got her start as a young journalist and met her husband, Shaul Bakhash.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo