Iran's intelligence service views the nation it serves as besieged on all sides by the U.S. military, said scholar and journalist Haleh Esfandiari.
Esfandiari spoke about Iran and U.S. foreign policy Tuesday at the annual dinner meeting of the World Affairs Council of the Monterey Bay Area.
If a sense of paranoia pervades government policies, she said, it's because U.S. and NATO forces are deployed around the region — in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. Iran also has the example of the U.S.- and British-backed overthrow of elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, after he nationalized his country's oil reserves.
Iran's current paranoia led to repeated crackdowns on protesters who took to the streets in June to demand that their votes be counted in the nation's 10th presidential election. Protesters were arrested, imprisoned, tortured and shot.
An incident during the election, when a young supporter presented reformist challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi with a green scarf, inspired his followers to adopt the color green as an emblem, she said.
That sparked fears by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the United States was trying to foster something similar to the Czech Republic's "velvet revolution," Ukraine's "orange revolution" or Georgia's "rose revolution," whose goals were to effect regime change.
The result of the crackdown on the "green revolution," Esfandiari said, has been increasing radicalization of the nation's "restless" under-30 generation, who make up more than half of Iran's population of 66 million.
A steady drumbeat on social networks such as Facebook and YouTube has fueled resistance in Iran. A more open and friendly approach by President Barack Obama has made him enormously popular among the youth and prompted crowds that once chanted "death to America" to change their refrain to "Death to Russia, Death to China" for those nations' support of Ahmadinejad.
The young people, she said, will eventually prevail.
Esfandiari experienced the regime's paranoia firsthand.
She was in Iran to visit her mother in 2006 and was robbed at knifepoint on the street on her way back to the United States. The robber took her Iranian and U.S. passports, and the government refused to replace them or allow her to leave the country.
From May 8 to Aug. 21, 2007, she was held in solitary confinement in Iran's Evin Prison after being accused of attempting to overthrow the government.
"My joke was that the most powerful nation in the region felt that a 67-year-old grandmother could overthrow it," she said.
She was held in a locked room, "bigger than a normal cell," with small, barred, rectangular windows set high on the wall, her only means of telling day from night. Lights were left on in her cell constantly, Esfandiari said, and she was left with a copy of the Quran. She read it cover to cover, twice. She composed a children's book and a biography of her mother in her head.
She was not physically abused or tortured, Esfandiari said. But she knew what had befallen other inmates of Evin Prison in the past, and was cut off from news from the outside and unaware of international efforts under way to free her.
She looked forward to conversations with women guards about recipes, families and other mundane matters.
"I'm a very disciplined person," she said. "I decided I could either fall apart and confess to anything they wanted, or I could think that I have had a wonderful 67 years, a wonderful family, a fine career, and make it through this phase of my life with utmost dignity."
Esfandiari established a regular exercise regimen for herself, walking and performing Pilates exercises in her cell. She managed to get other books to read.
She was periodically blindfolded and taken for interrogations, sometimes conducted by university professors, who spoke to her while she was told to sit facing a wall.
Part of her discipline, she said, was to recall every word of the interrogations back in her cell so she would not be caught in inconsistencies her questioners could seize on.
She lost 20 pounds during her captivity.
Esfandiari wrote about her experiences in the newly published "My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran."
She was released after her mother surrendered the deed to her flat as security. Her mother has since died, Esfandiari said, and she has not gone back.
Esfandiari, 69, who holds a doctorate from the University of Vienna, is director of the Middle East program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
She frequently writes, lectures and organizes seminars on women's issues, Iranian trends and politics, and democracy in the Middle East. She is the author of "Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution," published in 1997.
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.