Among the many mixed signals coming from Iran in recent days -- it's willing to talk with the U.S. on the one hand; it's moving ahead on all fronts with its nuclear program on the other -- one signal deserves a closer look: Tehran's decision to charge an Iranian-American journalist with espionage.
This is a significant event that likely serves multiple, unpleasant purposes for an Iranian government with which the Obama administration is about to begin talking.
Such an arrest helps chill internal dissent on the eve of an important presidential election season in Iran. It may be a signal to the U.S. -- which asked in writing for the journalist's release before she was charged -- that mistrust lives on despite recent diplomatic overtures. And it again shows the world that Iran will play by its own rules, even as the diplomatic equation is changing. The U.S. response, in turn, will send important signals of its own.
Executive Washington Editor Gerald Seib discusses the effect of Iran's espionage accusations against an American journalist on Iranian-American relations.
All this matters because the next few months figure to be crucial in U.S.-Iranian relations. The Obama administration declared last week that it is willing to sit down with Iran at international talks over its nuclear program, a departure from previous policy. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country is open to talking -- but at the same time announced that Iran has expanded uranium-enrichment work and opened a new plant for developing nuclear fuel.
This jockeying is going on amid the run-up to Iran's June 12 presidential election, which will determine whether the U.S. will be dealing with the enigmatic Mr. Ahmadinejad or the possibly more pragmatic opposition figure, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Hanging over it is the possibility the new Israeli government of incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may decide to take matters into its own hands with a military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities.
In the midst of all that, a journalist can be an easy target for signal-sending. That's likely what has happened with Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American journalist incarcerated in Tehran's Evin Prison and publicly charged by the Iranian government last week with espionage.
(A disclosure: I have been where Ms. Saberi is today. As a Middle East correspondent for the Journal, I was arrested on a reporting trip to Iran in 1987, taken to Evin Prison and accused of being a spy. Unlike Ms. Saberi, though, I was never formally charged and was released after four days.)
It's hard to imagine someone with a profile that looks less like that of an international covert operator. Ms. Saberi grew up in Fargo, N.D., the daughter of an Iranian father and Japanese mother. She worked early in her career at a television station in Fargo, and moved to Iran six years ago to work as a freelance journalist for the BBC, National Public Radio, CBS and other organizations.
The strange path her case has taken strongly suggests political maneuvering. The Iranian government revoked her press card about two years ago, but let her continue working on projects anyway. Then it arrested Ms. Saberi more than two months ago. After that, its accusations have wandered about.
Some reports indicated she was taken initially because she bought a bottle of wine, forbidden by law. Iranian officials said she was working without a press card, though they must have known that for some time. Only in recent days did the formal espionage charge -- obviously far more serious -- materialize.
Spying is an easy charge to make against journalists, because what they do for a living -- gathering information, asking nosy questions -- can be made to look like espionage. And Ms. Saberi, a freelancer without the backing of a big international news organization, was particularly vulnerable.
What, then, might be the point of jailing a journalist, especially now? Obviously, it's the kind of move that chills internal dissent. The attention such cases get within Iran -- and they attract ample notice -- shows all that the internal security services are watching as the presidential campaign unfolds.
Picking dual-citizen Iranian-Americans singles out people who are especially exposed to government action because of their Iranian citizenship, while also sending a signal to the U.S.
A similar thing happened two years ago, when the Iranians seized a 67-year-old Iranian-American scholar, Haleh Esfandiari. Lee Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she works, says he contacted about 30 embassies, enlisted academic groups and wrote to a series of Iranian leaders ranging up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to ultimately win her release after four months.
It also may be that hard-liners within Iran wanted to create precisely this kind of case to mount an obstacle to meaningful American-Iranian dialogue.
That's a problem for President Barack Obama, but he also has meaningful leverage. Many in the Iranian government do want a dialogue with the U.S. Mr. Obama recently sent them an important signal by implicitly indicating his policy won't be to push for regime change in Iran, but rather to deal with the government he gets there.
In return, the U.S. should get a lower level of paranoia among Iranian officials and security services. More broadly, the ground rules for the coming U.S.-Iran dialogue are being laid. It's a good time for the U.S. to make clear that jockeying for position by grabbing American citizens off the streets of Tehran won't be part of this process.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com