Haleh Esfandiari: Iran – My Prison, My Home

Iran: My Prison, My Home

Haleh Esfandiari, Founder and Director, Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program; Author, My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran

Renowned Iranian journalist and scholar Esfandiari was forced to leave the country and settled in the U.S. during the 1979 revolution. Over the years, she returned to visit family members, but during a 2006 visit she was told by officials that she was under investigation and could not leave the country. She later discovered that the Intelligence Ministry believed her scholarly work at the Woodrow Wilson Center was a cover by the U.S. government to overthrow the Iranian regime. What ensued was a Kafkaesque journey through the paranoid and repressive Iranian bureaucracy that left Esfandiari a prisoner for eight months.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California on October 28, 2009.