Hamilton helps free American scholar held in Iran

He isn’t about to say so, but former Rep. Lee Hamilton must wonder why he is having more luck getting the attention of the leaders of Iran than he is with the leaders of his own government.

{mosads}As co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group with former Secretary of State James Baker, the Indiana Democrat saw the Bush administration and even some Democratic leaders of Congress turn a blind eye last winter toward the bipartisan commission’s 96-page report, which urged Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 and step up diplomatic efforts in the region.

But Hamilton, who heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was able to make his voice heard by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in helping gain the release of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian-American academic who was arrested in Tehran on spying charges last December while visiting her 93-year-old mother. Esfandiari, who is director of the center’s Middle East Program, spent 105 days in solitary confinement before being released from prison on Aug. 21. On Tuesday, she was allowed to leave Iran.

As it happened, Hamilton appealed to Khamenei on humanitarian grounds for Esfandiari’s release. Khamenei control’s Iran’s military, judiciary and all critical foreign and domestic matters and outranks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I wrote to President Ahmadinejad, to the vice president and the Speaker of the House, and got no response,” Hamilton said last week. “I wrote a fourth letter to Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. He responded by letter. I’m told that I’m the only American leader he has responded to. I wrote a very careful letter — I have not released it — and made a plea to him as a religious leader on humanitarian grounds to release Haleh.”

On Aug. 14, Hamilton received a call from Mohammad Khazaee, the permanent representative of Iran to the United Nations, asking him to come to New York and meet with him.

“We met at his residence on Fifth Avenue at 7:30 a.m. and had a long conversation, for more than two hours,” Hamilton said. “He was optimistic that they would get Haleh out of prison, and he became my point of contact. We had several subsequent conversations.”

Then, on Aug. 21, after Khazaee returned to Tehran, his office informed Hamilton that Esfandiari, 67, had been released on $320,000 bail. Hamilton said at the time he was confident she would be freed and allowed to return to the U.S.

“I am elated to get the news that Haleh can now leave Iran and is returning to the United States,” Hamilton said Tuesday.

In the interview last week, Hamilton said he spoke by phone with Esfandiari and “she seemed to be in good spirits. Our paramount concern is her health and well-being. I asked her how she was doing, and she said, ‘I’m fine.’ She said her ‘minders’ told her she will get out of the country and just ‘to be patient.’ President Ahmadinejad has said she should be able to leave the country.”

Asked whether he played a key role in securing her release, Hamilton said, “I don’t know. Who knows? We’ve had no communication with that country for decades. We just don’t know how to talk to them.”

Hamilton, who served 34 years in Congress and chaired the House International Affairs Committee before retiring in 1998, credits the news media as well as many private groups, non-governmental organizations and members of Congress for calling attention to Esfandiari’s plight.

“I think the visibility that the media maintained and the overwhelming support from these groups and individuals had an effect,” he said. “Our appeal was simple: Haleh is a scholar and not a spy, and please let her go.”

As for the Bush administration’s ambivalent response to the Iraq Study Group’s 79 recommendations, Hamilton said he doesn’t expect that to change when President Bush delivers his congressionally mandated progress report to Congress this month.

Referring to the testimony that Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will deliver to Congress on Sept. 10 and 11, Hamilton said, “Gen. Petraeus will give an upbeat report that will basically recommend continuing the surge to spring of next year, which is as far as they can go without a redeployment.
“The president will agree to it, so the surge will continue. Congress will not be able to stop it. They may put obstacles in the way but they won’t be able to override a veto. So the president is in a very commanding position.”

But Hamilton predicts that Bush “will have to do something to placate the Democrats and the Republicans who are up for reelection. I believe we will see a shift in rhetoric and he will begin to talk about redeployment and downsizing. He will do it in a very flexible way so he and the Republicans will be able to say they have done it in a responsible way.”

Noting that a number of senators of both parties are co-sponsoring legislation to enact the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, Hamilton said, “The president is gradually adapting — gradually — in some respects. But I think the momentum is shifting from when Congress went on recess.”

He added: “Things have improved a little bit in Iraq. The White House believes it’s shifting in their direction. But as far as the surge is concerned, the question is not can we clear [areas controlled by insurgents]. We’ve got the military power to do it. But the pattern has been, again and again, that we’ve cleared and aren’t able to hold.

“But the political purpose of the surge is to create time for Iraqi leaders to move toward national reconciliation,” he warned.
“That’s not happening. It’s very obvious that the results of the surge so far have not given Iraq’s political leaders an opportunity to do that.”