Roxana's Spy Conviction: A Good Day for Iran's Crazies

 Roxana Saberi convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison: as weird as it is unfortunate.  Her lawyer will appeal the conviction, and hopefully this game will come to an end and Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who filed for several news organizations including NPR, will be free.

 It's unfortunate, because the Iranian regime--Saberi was tried in a revolutionary court--seems with this episode to be willfully snubbing President Obama's distinct, historic olive branch for better relations between Washington and Tehran. After living and working as a journalist in Iran for six years, Saberi was initially detained for the illegal purchase of alcohol and only later charged with being a spy. And the trouble for her only began a few weeks after Obama's inauguration and his explicit reach-out to the Islamic world including the Iranian authorities. Saberi's case is bound to complicate Obama's olive branch--and that may be precisely the aim of those behind the case against her. Better relations with the U.S. suits many in Iran, including inside the regime, but it doesn't suit the hard-line factions who use their control of the security apparatus to advance their political and personal interests. There are many on the American side, too, not to mention in the Netanyahu government in Israel, who will be only too happy to point out how Saberi's case proves there's only one way to deal with the Iranian regime and that's to bomb it out of existence. Obama's team will have to stay cool and patient and not let some internal power play in Iran to become a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to war. But if there are moderates inside the Iranian regime, as I believe there are, they're going to have to start challenging the crazies before they take the country over the cliff. If Obama isn't successful in talking to the Iranian regime, neither he nor his eventual successors are likely to put much stock in that approach. That's a dangerous road to travel.

 The conviction is also weird. If Saberi is the spook the regime claims she is, wasn't that a doozy of a failure for Iranian intelligence not to unmask her for six whole years? Eight years is a harsh sentence for an innocent woman, but to accept the Iranian claim against her for a moment, then what kind of foreign spy and traitor gets off with an eight year jail term in a country where they will hang you for much less? It's almost as if the Iranians are openly saying, "Yeah, this isn't really about Saberi. We're just messing with everybody!"

 NPR President Vivian Schiller speaks for us all:

 We are deeply distressed by this harsh and unwarranted sentence. Ms. Saberi has already endured a three-month confinement in Evin Prison, and we are very concerned for her well-being. Through her work for NPR over several years, we know her as an established and respected professional journalist. We appeal to all of those who share our concerns to ask that the Iranian authorities show compassion and allow her to return home to the United States immediately with her parents.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo