Haider Mullick, a research intern at the Woodrow Wilson Center, has published an op-ed in a leading Pakistani-American newspaper (The Pakistan Link) about Haleh’s case:

Esfandiari’s illegal detainment is not just an attack on an Iranian American scholar or a highly regarded think tank, but an attack on the fundamental global struggle for objective, reasoned and unfettered scholarship…

How can an Iran that incarcerates a scholar visiting her 93 year old mother expect to placate Western fears of a nuclear showdown? Rather than commit such an egregious act as imprisoning Esfandiari, Ahmedinejad should have provided state funds to send government representatives to provide the other side of the story in Washington’s think tank world. Better yet he should have approached Esfandiari to act as a productive intermediary to expedite and strengthen ongoing back-door diplomatic efforts with the Americans. Yet instead he has just invited the scorn of the scholarly world. How many scholars will visit Iran now? And what will they say in Washington’s policy circles?