Haleh Esfandiari

Dr. Haleh Esfandiari is an Iranian-born scholar with dual citizenship of Iran and the US, and is the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) in Washington, D.C. In 2007 she was arrested in Iran and held for 110 days, during which time she was charged with espionage and “endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners", but was subsequently released. The question is : were those charges true ?

A longtime acquaintance, Haleh Esfandiari, who served as deputy director of one of her many cultural foundations, said that "she [Farah Pahlavi] never lost that popular touch. She was genuine. While the shah gave the impression of being distant, she allowed people to rush and embrace her while visiting the provinces." Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center here, attended the same girls school in Tehran as Pahlavi.

Ashraf and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (c.1940s)

According to Wikipedia: In 1953, Ashraf Pahlavi played an important role in Operation Ajax as she was the one who changed Mohammad Reza Shah's mind in giving the consent to CIA and SIS to start the operation. The Shah had originally opposed the operation and for a while resisted accepting it. In early 1953, she met with CIA agents who asked her to talk to her brother since she was the only one who was able to change his mind. Some Iranians view her as a traitor to Iran due to her involvement in the 1953 coup. Others regard her as a patriot for the same reason. By her own account she was of limited financial means when Mossadegh sent her into exile in Paris. However, in later years she was said to have accumulated a large fortune. Notable positions held : President of the Women's Organization Of Iran, 1967-1979

In part because of Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology, which the U.S. believes is a disguised effort to build nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats have put a high priority on tracking a variety of Iranian activities. The CIA has links to international business people who either travel to Iran or have encounters, through conferences or other events, with Iranians in fields of interest to the U.S.

"Clawson said the CIA has hired Iranian-Americans in this country to scour publicly available information produced by Iranians. The intelligence agencies and the departments of State and Defense also have put a much greater emphasis on training their officers in the Persian language and culture, he said. "Just an explosion of people taking Persian courses," he said, adding that this has improved the government's ability to understand developments in Iran in the past few years."

Haleh Esfandiari (February–June 1995) Professor Esfandiari is a native of Iran who has been teaching Persian language and literature at Princeton University for the past fifteen years. Before coming to the United States she worked as a reporter and editor with the Kayhan newspapers in Tehran, then as a senior official of the Women's Organization of Iran, and subsequently as the Deputy Director of an important cultural organization in Tehran. While a fellow at the Forum, Professor Esfandiari worked on a book entitled "Reconstructed Lives: Women and the Islamic Revolution". It is based on interviews she conducted during visits to Iran and examines in detail, through individual biographies, how Iranian women have coped with the impact on their lives of the Islamic Revolution.

Many Iranians feel ashamed about the Islamic revolution's violent excesses, which were particularly bad 25 years ago when I was a student of Mrs. Esfandiari and her husband, Shaul Bakhash. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

When a scandal in the 1980s revealed the CIA's 35 years of international manipulations, President Ronald Reagan established the National Endowment for Democracy as a more discreet and less controversial instrument. It had the same purpose - to destabilise unfriendly governments by funding the opposition. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1983, ostensibly as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human rights and democracy. In 1991 its first president, the historian Allen Weinstein, confessed to The Washington Post (22 September 1991): "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

Reconstructed Lives: Women and the Islamic Revolution In Iran, the Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran - doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen - Haleh Esfandiari gathers telling accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda.

President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs. A security source in the US told The Sunday Telegraph that the presidential directive, known as a "non-lethal presidential finding", would give the CIA the right to collect intelligence on home soil, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and emigrés within the US. "Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information," he said. The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime.

A statement issued by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence alleges that the Wilson Center, along with similar US institutions, were conspiring to overthrow the government by setting up a network "against the sovereignty of the country. This is an American designed model with an attractive appearance that seeks the soft-toppling of the country." According to reports of the Iranian TV broadcast, the charges center on the relationship between the Wilson Center's Middle East Program and the Soros Foundation, an organization Iran believes is trying to foment a 'soft' revolution in its country. The Middle East Program did receive funds from the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute as well as from other institutions in the conduct of its normal activities and to bring experts to the Center to participate in conferences.

How is the Center funded? The Center is a public-private partnership. Approximately one third of the Center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government. The remainder of the Center's funding comes from foundations, grants and contracts, corporations, individuals, endowment income, and subscriptions.

"... the domineering powers, who tyrannize human beings with their deceitful propagation on the pretext of democracy, freedom and human rights, are opposed to the Islamic Republic."

American Nationals Arrested in Iran "Confess" on Iranian TV Following are excerpts from interviews with three American nationals of Iranian origin, arrested in Iran. The interviews were aired on Iranian Channel 1 on July 18 and 19, 2007. Haleh Esfandiari: My name is Haleh Esfandiari. I was born in Iran, and I am 67 years old. I live in America, in Washington D.C. I studied in Austria, and I received my degree in journalism and art history 44 years ago, from the University of Vienna. Two months before the Revolution, I left Iran for London. I stayed there for a year and a half, but did not work. In 1980, I went to America, to Princeton, New Jersey, and I taught Farsi at Princeton University for 14 years. In 1996, I received a research scholarship from the Wilson Center in Washington, in order to complete a book about women in Iran – a book I had begun writing earlier. […] Towards the end of 1997, the director of the international program at the Wilson Center contacted me, and offered me a part-time position in order to found a Middle East program. […] What was the purpose of founding an Iranian program in addition to the Middle East program? Whenever a speaker from Iran comes and delivers a speech in a center as important as the Wilson Center, many people come to listen. Who comes to these meetings? Policy shapers. Who are the policy shapers in America? The policy shapers in Washington are people who are active in governmental organizations, people who work in the American Congress, people who are part of the intelligence agencies, people who work for news agencies, and people who are active in foundations and universities, as well as research centers. In other words, there is quite a wide spectrum of policy shapers. […] What was my role in all of this? My role was to provide information about the [Iranian] speakers. Since I had been out of Iran for so many years, at first, I would consult Iranian experts in Washington, and ask them about the [speakers], or I would ask other Iranian experts throughout the U.S., who work in universities or research centers. There was another method. If, when I was going to Iran, I had a name to check, I would contact the person, and we would become acquainted. […] For several years, UCLA has been holding a Middle East conference. In recent years, it was held in Athens, in cooperation with the Greek Ministry of Defense. They always insist that anything mentioned in these conferences should not be publicized outside. […] I participated in this conference twice, because they asked me to form a group on women's issues. From America, there were Mr. Spiegel, the organizer of the conference, and Judith Yaphe, a professor at the U.S. National Defense University, who I think used to be a CIA analyst. Other participants in the conference included a senior official from the Greek Ministry of Defense, the former Canadian ambassador to Egypt, somebody from the Swedish Foreign Ministry, and an E.U. representative. From Israel came Mr. David Menashri, who is a professor of Iranian studies at one of their universities, as well as Mr. Yossi Alpher, who was, I believe, an intelligence officer for ten years, and who is now the editor of the e-zine "Bitterlemons." […] There is a connection between the government, the government officials, and the heads of these research centers. It is like a revolving door. You know these doors which you enter from one side and leave from the other... For instance, the president of the Brookings Institution was Deputy Secretary of State in President Clinton's administration. The president of the American Council on Foreign Relations – an extremely important organization – was Director of Policy Planning in the State Department, during the first term of the Bush administration. He is now president of the American Council on Foreign Relations. […] I have been in Iran for nearly five months now. I have had an opportunity to think about the issues I have discussed with you. I have come to the conclusion that these people – myself included – have become links in a chain created by foundations, research institutes, and universities, that in the name of democracy, in the name of the empowerment of women, and in the name of dialogue, have created networks in Iran, which should eventually bring about fundamental changes in the Iranian regime. In fact, they should shake the system. [… continues with others speaking]

Monica Attard: And at your lowest point during these interrogations, both when you were free in Tehran and when you were in prison, did you ever consider telling the Iranians what they actually wanted to hear? Haleh Esfandiari: No I always told them the truth. And that's why when they asked me, when they said would you repeat all this on TV, in a TV interview? I said sure why not. I mean I don't have anything to hide, whatever I'm telling you, I'm going to tell it in an interview. Monica Attard: So you did that? Haleh Esfandiari: Well sure, I did that. But what they did, they cut out and spliced and took bits and pieces and as a result the interview sounded much more in a way very sinister.

Another was Kian Tajbakhsh, who was also released without charge. In his "confession video" he explains, "The long-term goal of the Soros Foundation is to achieve an open society [in Iran]. The way to achieve this is to create a rift between the rulers and the people. Through this rift, those parts of civil society which were formed and strengthened according to the concept of open society will exert pressure on the rulers to change their conduct. This rift can be created like what happened in Georgia, or else this conduct can be altered gradually, through elections and other "soft" methods. In order to create this rift, either you weaken the central government, or else you strengthen that part of civil society which opposes the government."

Dr. Ramin Jahanbaglou (various spellings) was a fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy in 2001-2. "His NED project focused on the role of Iranian intellectuals in promoting Iranian democracy, including the attitudes of youth and young professionals in Iran today." - www.ned.org In his "confession video" he says, "Now, when I look back on all my activities during the years I spent in America until I reached Iran, I realize that my activities served the interests of Iran's enemies, and not the interests of the Iranian people."

Another Iranian-American arrested was Parnaz Azima. Azima worked for the Persian-language Radio Farda run jointly by Prague-based, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America, which receives the bulk of the money from the 'Democracy Fund'. She was visiting her sick mother when charged with "disseminating propaganda", which is obviously true since everything Radio Farda broadcasts is propaganda.

Another arrested in 2007 was Ali Shakeri, who according to Wikipedia was "a founding and active member of Ettehade Jomhourikhahan-e Iran (EJI), which advocates a democratic and secular republic in Iran." - just the sort of person any theocracy would be happy to see the back of. Amazingly, he also was visiting his aged mother when arrested.

New Bid to Find Missing Ex-F.B.I. Agent (NYT, 12 April 2009) Mr. [Robert] Levinson spent more than 20 years with the F.B.I. Before his retirement in 1998, he specialized in Russian organized crime cases. Most of his work as a private investigator involved product counterfeiting, though he also worked for human rights organizations. [including Global Witness which is partly funded by George Soros] Mr. Levinson disappeared in March 2007 on Kish Island, [an Iranian] Persian Gulf resort that is also a smuggling hub. His family has said that the former agent, who has worked in recent years as a private investigator, went there in connection with a cigarette smuggling case. On Kish, he met with another American, Dawud Salahuddin, who fled to Tehran in 1980 after killing an associate [Ali Akbar Tabatabai] of the former Shah of Iran in Maryland. Mr. Levinson was last seen checking out of a hotel on Kish and getting into a taxi to the airport. Since that day, even the basic question of whether Mr. Levinson is alive remains unresolved.

We know that the US Government uses its nuclear weaponry and its conventional military forces to project US power around the world.

We know that the US Government uses proxy forces (e.g. NATO, Israel, Ethiopia, Pakistan) to achieve its ends when direct intervention is too blatant.

Despite all their talk of "Freedom and Democracy", they also isolate and overthrow democratic governments and support military dictatorships whenever it suits them.

We know they use subversion, spying and terrorism to further their agenda.

We know they use their ravenous economic power to make and break governments, and to develop new economic opportunities for exploitation by means of sanctions, bilateral trade deals, "free trade" agreements, World Bank/IMF loans, corporate investment, etc.

And we know they use the 'soft power' of academic networking to find new contacts for fomenting subversion and ultimately revolution.

Obama : "The nuclear options remains on the table."

Gates : " ... the deployment of two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf is a "reminder" to Tehran of US determination to defend its interests in the region."

Biden : "Look, Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else. - Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that."

Clinton : "If Iran were to attack Israel, they should be totally obliterated."

The democratically elected Mossadeq government was overthrown in 1953 in favour of the Shah, and once he was in power, the CIA organised his dreaded SAVAK which terrorised his people, and he was applauded for developing a nuclear power industry.

The US supports and protects the anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in Iraq and Jundullah in Baluchistan, despite them being terrorist groups.

Obama renews Bush's sanctions on Iran one week ahead of his 'friendly Persian New Year greeting', which understandably went down like a lead balloon.

From: Juan Cole Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 2:24 PM Message: I've killfiled you.