Haleh Esfandiari

Judith M. Havemann

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On December 30, 2006, Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, was stopped and robbed on her way to the Tehran airport.Trapped in Iran without a passport, she was interrogated by intelligence agents almost daily for six weeks and was then placed in solitary confinement.

Ordeal in Iran: An Interview with Haleh Esfandiari

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1989 was a watershed year in Iran: constitutional changes, a fatwa against Rushdie, reconstruction from the Iran-Iraq War, and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini.