Iran release of US journalist removes obstacle to US-Iran dialogue

The new verdict came after a five-hour hearing Sunday, during which Iranian officials emphasized legal procedure, allowing Saberi to defend herself and two lawyers to speak on her behalf. That appeal was in sharp contrast to the original lightning trial of April 13, held in secret and without lawyers, in which sentencing took place in less than an hour.

Saberi has worked for NPR, the BBC, and Fox. She will now be banned from working as a journalist in Iran for five years. Lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said the appeal had found that the original charge of "cooperating with a hostile state" was struck down, because the US and Iran could not be defined as mutually hostile toward one another.

The reduced and suspended sentence was based on a charge of "gathering secret documents," Mr. Nikbakht said, according to Agence France-Presse. Saberi is free to leave Iran.

The former American beauty queen, who has lived in Iran for six years and had been working on a book about Iran, first told her parents by telephone that she had been arrested for buying a bottle of wine, which is illegal in the Islamic state. Then officials said Saberi had been working illegally, since her press card was revoked two years ago.

Finally, the much more serious charges of espionage were laid down. Saberi's father said his daughter had been "deceived" into making a confession that was later used against her. Before and during her hunger strike, the father reported that Ms. Saberi had lost weight and was suicidal.

The case that grabbed headlines in the West also factored into Iran's political dynamic, where the arch-conservative Mr. Ahmadinejad is up for reelection in a June 12 vote, but under fire from a wide spectrum of opponents for his poor handling of the economy and for aggressive foreign policy speeches.

In the past four years, Ahmadinejad has also taken a number of unprecedented steps to ease 30 years of hostility between the US and Iran heralded by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. He wrote letters to former President George Bush and the American people, offered to debate Mr. Bush, and said that Iran and the US could be "good friends" if American policies changed.

He also wrote a letter of congratulations to Obama almost immediately after the US leader's election victory. The US State Department has said that Iran would "win American goodwill" if Saberi were released.

Ahmadinejad "is in a difficult position, because his most powerful clerical backers … are very open in their contempt for the US, and are very open in saying that were the Islamic Republic to open up to the US, it would lead to the demise of the entire [Islamic] system," says Sadjadpour at Carnegie.

"On the other hand, he is in an election year and he has to appeal to a young population, which is overwhelmingly in favor of an improved relationship with the US," he adds. "So [Ahmadinejad] is trying to reconcile two essentially irreconcilable positions."

Previous

1 | 2