[A-List] Regarding the detention of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari

["Leigh Meyers" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

This comment was not accepted for posting @ Informed Comment/Juan Cole.
http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/wright-boycott-threat-puts-pressure-on.html

It is now an open letter to the professor:

On the topic of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari's detention.

Professor, I have a problem... Cognitive dissonance if you would,
believing that director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow
Wilson Center for Scholars, *as a job one does*, is NOT intrinsically
involved with 'regime change activities'.

It is  'baggage', so to speak, that comes with the job description.

I don't believe she's a spy... not at all, a patsy, an actor in a...
umn.. much larger 'play'.

I'll use a couple of quotes from an updated BBC article to illustrate
the dissonance I feel:

"Earlier this week, Mrs Esfandiari's husband told the BBC his wife's
detention could be due to what he described as excessive zeal on the
part of Iranian intelligence agents, who seemed to feel exchanges
between Iranians and Americans were somehow sinister and
destabilising."

I couldn't fathom *why* Iran's intel apparatus might feel that way.

British & American commandos are operating all along the Iraq/Iran
border to find 'illicit arms shipments'. More that we don't hear
about. Cross border incursions, hot pursuits...

Perhaps legitimate, perhaps in error, perhaps on purpose testing
Iran's border defense system

No reason for Iran to worry about all that silly stuff.

How irrational.

[The Buffalo extracts his tongue from cheek]

In my humble, and personally removed opinion, Haleh Esfandiari is a
pawn in the middle of an increasingly ugly propaganda war leading to
an armed (nuclear on our side) showdown and it's a bad bad thing.

I can only hope her lawyer's statement:

"I will use all legal methods to defend my client and to prove her
innocence and I hope that this can be carried out in Iran's courts,"

...becomes reality.

It would bolster Iran's jurisprudential reputation internationally and
perhaps defuse some really nasty propaganda going around about Iran's
...umn... 'civility' in the international arena, and the militarized
situations that may become of it.

I'll sign the petition, but I'm dissonant. I hate that...

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6671309.stm";>[Source]</a>