VZCZCXRO0403
PP RUEHAG RUEHDF RUEHDIR RUEHIK RUEHLZ RUEHROV
DE RUEHC #0300/01 1592133
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 082124Z JUN 07
FM SECSTATE WASHDC
TO EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA PRIORITY 0114
RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA PRIORITY 7890
RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI PRIORITY 1113
RUEHNY/AMEMBASSY OSLO PRIORITY 3799
RUEHOT/AMEMBASSY OTTAWA PRIORITY 5787
RUEHUL/AMEMBASSY SEOUL PRIORITY 3522
RUEHROV/AMEMBASSY VATICAN PRIORITY 0639
RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON PRIORITY 3765
RUEHDIR/IRAN RPO DUBAI PRIORITY 0010

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 STATE 080300 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM IR PHUM EUN
SUBJECT: DEMARCHE: MISSING/DETAINED AMCITS IN IRAN 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Department asks that addressee posts 
raise the issue of missing and detained American citizens in 
Iran with their host governments and request that host 
government contacts reach out to their Iranian interlocutors 
regarding the speedy return of these individuals to their 
families.  Note that only one AmCit is currently missing in 
Iran, Mr. Robert Levinson.  The other four individuals - 
Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali 
Shakeri - have been prevented from leaving Iran - and in some 
cases imprisoned - by the Iranian government, which has also 
publicly charged several of these individuals with 
threatening Iran's national security.  Together, these cases 
represent a disturbing pattern of harassment of innocent 
Americans in Iran.  END SUMMARY. 
 
---------- 
OBJECTIVES 
---------- 
¶2. Begin Objectives. 
 
-- Request that host government officials convey our concern 
about the recent pattern of AmCit harassment in Iran to their 
Iranian interlocutors. 
 
-- Use background information provided below to outline 
specific cases of concern, as appropriate. 
 
-- Emphasize the high level of USG interest in each of these 
cases, as evidenced by the June 1 Statement by the President 
on the Detention of American Citizens by the Iranian Regime 
(available at www.whitehouse.gov). 
 
-- Stress that we believe it is within the power of the 
Iranian government to assist in returning these individuals 
to their families. 
 
End Objectives. 
 
---------- 
BACKGROUND 
---------- 
 
¶3. Begin Background. 
 
(U) Dr. Haleh Esfandiari is the Director of the Middle East 
Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in 
Washington.  While visiting her 93-year-old mother in Tehran 
in December 2006, her passports were stolen at knife point. 
Four days later, she was summoned to the Ministry of 
Intelligence to begin a six-week series of interrogations 
focusing on the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. 
Repeatedly during the interrogations, Dr. Esfandiari was 
pressured to make "confessions" or to implicate the Wilson 
Center in activities in which it had no part, which she 
refused to do.  The interrogations ended February 14, and she 
heard nothing from her interrogators until early May, when 
she was again summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence.  Upon 
her arrival on May 8, Esfandiari was arrested and taken to 
Evin Prison where she remains.  On May 29, a judiciary 
spokesman charged Dr. Esfandiari, along with Kian Tajbakhsh 
and Parnaz Azima (see below), with endangering Iran's 
national security and espionage. 
 
(U) Kian Tajbakhsh is an Iranian-American social scientist 
and urban planner who works as a consultant for the Open 
Society Institute.  He has worked as a consultant in the 
areas of local government reform, urban planning and social 
policy, and has taught at universities in the United States 
and Iran.  On/around May 11, while Tajbakhsh was visiting 
Iran on personal travel, Iranian authorities arrested and 
imprisoned him.  An Iranian judiciary spokesperson later 
announced on May 29 that Tajbakhsh, along with Haleh 
Esfandiari and Parnaz Azima, had been charged with 
endangering national security and espionage. 
 
(U) Parnaz "Nazi" Azima is an Iranian-American journalist for 
Radio Farda based in Prague.  Iranian officials confiscated 
her passports at the Tehran airport on January 25 as she was 
entering Iran to visit her mother.  Azima has not been 
 
STATE 00080300  002 OF 002 
 
 
imprisoned to date, but she has tried unsuccessfully to 
retrieve her passports from Iranian authorities on several 
occasions.  She was summoned to appear at the Revolutionary 
Court on May 15, where the judge interrogated her for four 
hours, accused her of antiregime propaganda and ordered her 
to pay a bond of 800,000,000 Iranian Rials.  Later, on May 
29, a judiciary spokesman also identified Azima, together 
with Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh as a spy charged with 
endangering national security and espionage.  Azima's lawyer 
denies that she was ever charged with these crimes.  She 
remains out of prison at her mother's house in Tehran, but is 
unable to leave Iran. 
 
(U) Ali Shakeri works as a mortgage broker and peace activist 
in Irvine, California, and is a founding board member of the 
Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of 
California at Irvine.  He traveled to Iran in early May to 
visit his sick mother (NOTE: Shakeri's mother has since died) 
and was arrested by Iranian authorities on/around May 8.  The 
semiofficial Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) confirmed on 
June 8 that Shakeri was being held on security-related 
charges and investigated by the security department of the 
Tehran prosecutor's office. 
 
(U) Robert A. Levinson is a retired FBI Special Agent who 
traveled to Kish Island, Iran on March 8 on personal travel. 
Reports indicate that he checked into the Maryam Hotel in 
Kish Island that day, and that two Iranian officials escorted 
him out of his hotel room for "questioning" later that 
evening.  Mr. Levinson has not been seen or heard from since. 
 The USG has sent multiple "Swiss Note" message to Iran via 
the Swiss Protecting Power in Tehran inquiring as to his 
whereabouts, and Levinson's wife, Christine, has spoken 
directly with Iranian PermRep Zarif at the UN in New York, 
but so far the Iranian government has refused to acknowledge 
either his initial visit or his continued presence in Iran. 
 
End Background. 
 
---------------- 
POINT OF CONTACT 
---------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) The POC for these cases is Rob McInturff in the 
Office of Iranian Affairs (NEA/IR: 202-647-2520). 
RICE