Calling for Iran to immediately release five dual Iranian-American citizens currently being held unjustly.

Mr. Speaker, on December 30, 2006, Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian-American scholar, was in Iran to visit her sick 93-year-old mother when she was stopped by the Iranian authorities.

What followed was nearly 5 months of a series of intense interrogations and pressure tactics where she was harassed, threatened, and forced to make false statements against her employer, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. On May 8, she was again detained and imprisoned.

Her arrest and detention has angered analysts, human rights groups and lawmakers throughout the world. Yet still, the Iranian regime refuses to release her, claiming she is a spy who was plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

I would like to submit a statement issued from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars on May 21, 2007 for the record.

Mr. Speaker, these charges are a farce. Professor Esfandiari is an accomplished scholar of Persian literature, language and history who taught at Princeton University before becoming the Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars Middle East Program. Her husband, Mr. Shaul Bakhash, is a professor at George Mason University of Fairfax, VA. The Woodrow Wilson Center is a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose work is to research and foster dialogue within the scholarly world on current and future public policy issues.

Dr. Esfandiari's tireless dedication to teaching and advocating on behalf of Iran is clear. She has focused on building bridges and opening doors for peace in the Middle East. She has sought to facilitate and strengthen Iranian-American relations through numerous seminars, lectures and workshops with educators, policymakers and groups from both countries and has pressed wider freedoms to communicate about our common bonds and negotiate over our disagreements.

Like thousands of other Iranians living abroad, Professor Esfandiari is an academic who took a personal trip to see her family. If she as one individual scholar threatens this regime so much that they have to interrogate her for almost five months and detain her in a notorious prison cell known for human rights abuses, then one has to assume this regime is desperate to retain whatever control it can.

Today, the Iranian leadership's lack of courage and conscience is as clear as it is disappointing.

It is evident that this regime is criminalizing scholarly work of any kind, despite the fact that Iran's very own history is filled with centuries of scholarly research and discovery. This regime's egregious decision to imprison Dr. Esfandiari reflects a deepening departure from the values and ideals the Iranian people have historically prided themselves on.

Iran's renowned nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh once said ``There is no better way to govern Iran than democracy and social justice!''

Professor Esfandiari should be released immediately. Every day she is so unjustly detained, Iran proves the case of its detractors and makes it all the more difficult for institutions like Dr. Esfandiari's Wilson Center to treat the Iranian people with the respect that should be afforded to ah historic civilization and citizenship of 70 million people.

Statement on the Arrest in Tehran of Esfandiari, Director of the

Woodrow Wilson Center's Middle East Program

Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at

the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a

dual Iranian-American national, was arrested in

Tehran on May 8 and incarcerated in the Evin Prison.

The background to this entirely unjustified arrest is as

follows. Timeline of events:

December 21, 2006, Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle

East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for

Scholars, and a dual Iranian-American national, traveled from

Washington D.C. to Tehran, Iran to visit her 93-year-old

mother for one week.

On December 30, 2006, on her way to the airport to catch a

flight back to Washington, the taxi in which Dr. Esfandiari

was riding was stopped by three masked, knife-wielding men.

They threatened to kill her, and they took away all of her

belongings, including her Iranian and American passports.

On January 3, when applying for replacement Iranian travel

documents at the passport office, Dr. Esfandiari was invited

to an ``interview'' by a man from Iran's Ministry of

Intelligence.

Beginning on January 4, she was subjected to a series of

interrogations that stretched out over the next six weeks,

sometimes continuing for as many as four days a week, and

sometimes stretching across seven and eight hours in a single

day. Dr. Esfandiari went home every evening, but the

interrogations were unpleasant and not free from intimidation

and threat.

The questioning focused almost entirely on the activities

and programs of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center.

Dr. Esfandiari answered all questions fully; when she could

not remember details of programs stretching back five and

even eight years, the staff at the Wilson Center provided her

all the information requested. As a public organization, all

Wilson Center activities are on the public record. Repeatedly

during the interrogation, she was pressured to make a false

confession or to falsely implicate the Wilson Center in

activities in which it had no part, but she refused.

On Friday, January 15, in the third week of interrogations,

Dr. Esfandiari was told (misleadingly as it turned out) the

questioning was over. On January 18, the interrogator and

three other men showed up at Dr. Esfandiari's mother's

apartment. Dr. Esfandiari was taking a nap and was startled

to wake up and see the door to her bedroom open, her privacy

violated, and three strange men, one of them wielding a

video-camera, staring into her bedroom.

On February 14, the lengthy interrogations stopped.

On February 17, Haleh received one threatening phone call,

and then she did not hear anything from her interrogators for

ten weeks.

On February 20, Lee Hamilton, president and director of the

Wilson Center, wrote to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

asking that Dr. Esfandiari be allowed to travel. However,

President Ahmadinejad did not reply to the letter.

At the end of April or early May, she was telephoned once

again and invited to ``cooperate.'' In effect, she was being

asked to make a confession. She refused to make the false

statements.

On Monday, May 7 she was summoned to the Ministry of

Intelligence once again. When she arrived for her appointment

on Tuesday morning, May 8th, she was put into a car and taken

to Evin prison. She was incarcerated and was allowed only one

phone call to her mother.

On May 9 she called her mother asking her to bring her

clean clothes and her medicine. Her mother delivered the

small package at Evin Prison on May 10, but was not allowed

to see her.

On May 12, the hard-line daily ``Kayhan'' in an article

accused Dr. Esfandiari of working with the U.S. and Israeli

governments and with involvement in efforts to topple Iran's

Islamic regime.

On May 15, Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi

said that Dr. Esfandiari was being investigated for crimes

against national security and that her case was being handled

by the Intelligence Ministry.

On May 15, Haleh made a brief telephone call to her mother.

On May 16, Haleh's family retained the legal services of

Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi to represent her.

On May 17, in an interview with Washington Post Staff

Writer Robin Wright, Shirin Ebadi indicated that the Iranian

government has rejected her request to represent Dr.

Esfandiari. She also noted the court refused information on

the legal charges against Dr. Esfandiari, and denied her

legal team the ability to see Haleh.

On May 21 state-run television broadcasts in Iran indicated

that Haleh is being charged with seeking to topple the

government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Our efforts to obtain Haleh's release will continue and

will be redoubled. She will be in our thoughts and prayers

every day.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 430) calling on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately release Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution and yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, just a few short months ago, a remarkably accomplished Iranian American woman, Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, made a decision that any of us would make under a similar circumstance. Her 93-year-old mother was failing and she needed to visit her in Tehran without delay. She boarded a flight to Iran, completely unsuspecting of what would unfold.

After a visit with her ailing mother, Dr. Esfandiari reached the Tehran airport. As one of the leading Middle East scholars in the United States at the highly respected Woodrow Wilson Institute, she had no reason to believe she was about to encounter trouble. But on

her way to the airport, she was attacked by plain-clothed, knife- wielding thugs and her passport was stolen.

This was only the beginning of her nightmare. Iranian authorities refused to grant her a new passport. She was interrogated and put under house arrest. She was told she would not return to the United States. And the ordeal grew worse. Dr. Esfandiari, a slender woman of 67 years, has been detained without just cause ever since, under the outlandish pretense of being an enemy of Iran. And, ominously, late last month she was formally charged with espionage.

She now sits in Iran's notorious Evin Prison. She has been allowed to make but a few painfully brief phone calls to her family. She has been interrogated at excruciating length. At the height of absurdity, she has been pressured to acknowledge participation in some kind of alleged coup against the Iranian government. This type of effort at forced confession is beyond absurd. It goes to the heart of the injustice of the Iranian regime.

Despite quiet initiatives of diplomacy undertaken by many countries, organizations, and individuals on Dr. Esfandiari's behalf and frustrated by her audacious commitment to the truth, the Iranian security services have done what they know best, and that is arrest without cause.

In discussing Dr. Esfandiari's case, news articles have also cited at least four other cases of dual Iranian American citizens deplorably being detained in Iran for no justifiable reason. It is particularly worrisome that two of these detainees, like Dr. Esfandiari, have now been charged with espionage.

Oddly enough, what all of these five seem to have in common is a commitment to U.S.-Iranian engagement. The government of Iran has unjustly detained five American citizens without due legal process. And Mr. Van Hollen's resolution today aptly expresses the serious concern we have on their behalf and our justifiable demand that they be released without delay. These outrageous arrests are indicative of the blatant excesses and obvious shortcomings of the Iranian political system, too much tyranny and too little rule of law. This is a matter of basic human rights, and we cannot allow the Iranian government to continue trampling on the fundamental liberties of our citizens in this manner.

Ten Iranian parliamentarians have recently formed a Parliamentarian American friendship group. I call on these parliamentarians and all Iranians of good will, all people of good will, to use whatever influence they have to help bring about the immediate release of all American citizens in Iran who are held so unjustly and against their will.

I commend my friend and colleague from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) for introducing this important measure.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the author of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I have no more requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner) for his leadership on the Foreign Affairs Committee and for our national security interests around the world, and I thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Lantos, and the ranking member, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, for their bipartisan support in sending a strong message to the government of Iran that their actions are absolutely unacceptable and to pass this legislation to immediately and unconditionally release the Americans of Iranian descent that are being held by the government of Iran.

It was on May 30 of 2007, just a few weeks ago, the day after Washington and Tehran held their high profile talks with respect to Iraq that Iran turned around and charged three Iranian Americans, one academic, Haleh Esfandiari, a social scientist, Kian Tajbakhsh, and a journalist, Parnaz Azima, with spying, a charge which under Iran's Islamic law is punishable by death.

These trumped up charges are absolutely ridiculous. Haleh Esfandiari is a constituent of mine. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a 67- year-old Director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Kian Tajbakhsh is a respected social scientist who is consulted by George Soros' Open Society Institute at the World Bank, and Parnaz Azima is a Radio Farda journalist.

The government of Iran accused these Iranian Americans of endangering state security and fomenting a, quote, soft revolution. These are ridiculous charges under any circumstances and clearly an excuse by Iran to once again take action in violation of international law.

Just to emphasize the point, Ms. Esfandiari is someone who has invited scholars and statesmen from Iran to the United States to conferences and events and has even been criticized by some members of the Iranian American community for being too soft on the current regime in Tehran. Mr. Tajbakhsh has consulted directly for the Iranian government and, working with the Open Society Institute, helped run its humanitarian health outreach program in Iran with full cooperation of the Iranian government.

The lists of foreign detainees doesn't stop there. Iranian American businessman Ali Shakeri, who is on the board of the University of California at Irvine's Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, was arrested on May 8 as he returned to the United States from visiting his ill mother, who died during his stay.

These detainees have dedicated their lives to building bridges between the Americans and the people of Iran. Their presence in Iran to visit their parents or to conduct humanitarian work poses absolutely no threat to the people or the government of Iran.

Their detention is a gross perversion of the rule of law. And the claim that

the Iranian government has made that they seek dialogue and improved relations with the West is belied by the actions they have taken with respect to these individuals.

So we call today upon the Iranian government to do as they say they want to do, which is to have a better relationship with the United States and the people of the United States and to immediately, unconditionally release these Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the H.R. 430, introduced by my esteemed colleague Mr. Van Hollen of Maryland, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of dual Iranian-American citizens Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, Ms. Parnaz Azima, and a third unnamed individual also being detained against her will. Mr. Speaker, these three Americans have been unjustly incarcerated without due legal process. They have had their travel documents stolen, and they have been subjected to tactics of harassment. I strongly support this legislation, which expresses the serious concerns we have for these three individuals, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.

Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, one of the detained individuals, is head of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and widely recognized as one of Washington's top experts on Iran. Dr. Esfandiari was robbed of her passport upon her arrival at Tehran airport in December of last year when she went to visit her ailing, 93-year old mother. After being refused new documents, she was interrogated at excruciating length by Iranian intelligence, and pressured to make forced confessions that would falsely implicate herself and the Wilson Center in trying to launch a full-fledged coup in Iran. She consistently refused to tarnish her good name or the reputations of her colleagues.

Dr. Esfandiari was arrested on May 7th, and has been incarcerated, despite numerous efforts by countries, organizations, and individuals on her behalf. She faces ludicrous charges of seeking to launch a one- woman coup against the Iranian government. The United States government has called for her immediate release.

Unfortunately, Dr. Esfandiari is only one of a number of American citizens who have recently been detained in Iran without adequate legal grounds. Another case involved a journalist for Radio Farda, who was courageously involved in the effort to bring free and open media to the Iranian people. These outrageous arrests are indicative of the Iranian political system, including the concentration of power and the lack of rule of law.

Another American missing in Iran, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, disappeared after flying to Iran's Kish Island in March. I call on the Iranian government to use all the powers at its disposal to locate Mr. Levinson, if it has not already done so, and to repatriate him.

Mr. Speaker, I believe this is an issue of basic human rights. We as a Congress, and we as a nation, cannot allow the Iranian government to continue trampling on the fundamental liberties of our citizens in this manner. Therefore, I rise in strong support of this resolution, calling for the unconditional release of these three American citizens unjustly being held in Iranian prisons, and I call upon all of my colleagues to do likewise.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 430, which decries the unlawful imprisonment of dual U.S.-Iranian citizens by the regime in Tehran. As this resolution illustrates, Iranian intelligence officials have unlawfully detained, interrogated and imprisoned numerous dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, in particular Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, who works for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The Iranian government incarcerated Dr. Esfandiari in Evin Prison in Tehran on May 9 of this year. However, as I noted, this is not an isolated incident by any means. The Iranian government also confiscated the passport of Radio Farda journalist Parnaz Azima, an American citizen, when she arrived in Iran to visit her ill mother in January earlier this year.

Iranian government officials have interrogated Ms. Azima and pressured her to collaborate with Iranian intelligence. Iran has also imprisoned a consultant for the Open Society Institute and a fourth American citizen who has chosen to remain anonymous and who has been unlawfully detained in Iran for 6 months.

Mr. Speaker, this cannot stand. The Iranian government's recent actions are particularly egregious in light of that regime's past involvement in the killing of Americans and its past incitement and support of the taking of 66 American citizens hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on February 4, 1979, with 52 of those Americans held in captivity for 444 days.

In response, we must remain resolute in our condemnation of the Iranian regime for detaining innocent American citizens for political purposes and demand that the Iranian regime immediately and unconditionally permit all American citizens detained in Iran against their will to leave.

These threatening actions by the Iranian regime come amidst Tehran's ongoing support for Islamic militants in Iraq that are killing Iraqis and Americans alike, its arming and support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and its continued pursuit of nuclear capability in contempt of international demands that it suspend its enrichment activities. I therefore believe that the United States should suspend all contact with any agent, instrumentality or representative of the Iranian regime until Americans held hostage by Iran are released and other issues critical to the United States are addressed.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.