Given my planned trip to Iran on May 23 to take part in a new conference series on international political economy and Iran by the Ravand Institute, headed by ex-Ambassador to the UK Hossein Adeli (who broadly focuses on political economy in the Persian Gulf), I thought some words on the case of the imprisonment of Haleh Esfandiari at Evin Prison, Tehran, after four months of house arrest, were appropriate.  While her imprisonment at Evin is very recent (Tuesday of last week), her house arrest in Tehran spans a much longer period that we now know has included 8-hour stints of interrogation by authorities, apparently totaling at least 50 hours’ worth of grueling and intimidating sessions over 4 months’ time.  

I have to admit that this latest news has knocked the wind out of me – but not in regards to my own personal safety, which of course all my family from Kansas to Iowa to North Dakota are worried about.  I’m not worried about myself because Haleh was and is, technically, an Iranian citizen as well as holding an American passport and citizenship, and she has been a critic of women’s treatment in Revolutionary Iran in her capacity as an Iranian citizen.  And we all know that the current regime has been cracking down on Iranian citizens who attend Western events or travel abroad, or who have shown the impudence to re-settle somewhere else after the Revolution turned in a theocratic direction in the period 1979-1981.  So I’m not particularly concerned that a purely American citizen (like myself) will have his/her passport stolen and thrown in Evin Prison. 

What I am concerned about is what this means – what precedent it sets – for people I would call “global citizens,” and which constitutes a growing number of experts and former officials across the world’s capitols. It is actually this one case that, for me, has brought my own institution’s vision statement into sharp relief, to whit: “The [Stanley] foundation seeks a secure peace with freedom and justice, built on world citizenship and effective global governance…The foundation’s concept of principled multilateralism means working respectfully across differences to create fair, just, and lasting solutions.”   

Of course, we all know that the world operates largely according to cultural boundaries and nationalist sentiments.  Whether it takes the form of American Exceptionalism (on both sides of the partisan divide) - in the most egregious form in cases such as Git-mo, Eastern European prisons, arrests without charge of Arab-Americans, and renditions to other countries for torture and interrogation – or whether it takes on a Saudi, or Iranian, or Indian, or Turkish etc. etc. slant, the international system still lacks many of the ingredients of a true community (yes, I’m giving a slight nod to neo-cons’ critique of “international community” here).  Nationalism everywhere is on the rise – whether secular, Asian, Latin American, ethnic, religious, or other.  And certainly, political Islam itself - purportedly based on universal Islamic law – notably diverges in social and political practice across different nations and state boundaries and is no stranger to nationalist sentiments, as explained in detail by two Nixon Center authors in Foreign Affairs). 

But this international reality of fractured identities aside, globalization has had a demonstrable non-economic effect: the rapid growth of a cross-cultural, trans-national or supra-national identity among a growing band of people who are simultaneously national, regional, and global in their outlook, personality, personal goals, and even job definition.  This includes, say, a Malaysian or Indonesian who works for an NGO attached to the ASEAN framework in Southeast Asia; or a Japanese anti-nuclear activist who works with Pugwash; or an Italian-American globalist such as the Honorable Gianni Picco, who in the 1990s secured release of US hostages of Hizbollah by riding around in car trunks or back seats with a bag on his head (and who now advises the UN off and on); and certainly someone like Jimmy Carter.  I am guessing that most, if not all, readers of this blog either know such people, or consider themselves part of this growing strata. 

As I define it, this grey-area strata of people are as focused on finding commonalities across identities as they are on protecting and defending their own identity; and indeed, their self-identity cannot be easily summed up as owing to one country’s vision or mission.  Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they cannot fathom their own polity being secure and prosperous without the help and support of other polities, and without compromising on the legitimate concerns, interests, and values of other polities as well.  Indeed, global or world citizens may disagree with their own polity as much as agree with it, and measure both their own country’s, and other country’s, behavior through the lens of a rules-based global order, however tenuous or epiphenomenal the latter may be.  They are for openness, transparency, dialogue, trading of views, and even empathy with other identities than their own.  And they emphasize, in their own personal life as well as in their daily work, the cause of peace between individuals, nations, states, and competing ideologies. 

This certainly describes Haleh Esfandiari, if not the entire vision of the Wilson Center itself, where she has patiently built an edifice of scholarship and dialogue for almost ten years.  And that’s why I am so disappointed, depressed, and awestruck by this latest action of some authorities in Tehran. 

Realpolitik exists, alive and well, and it will continue for as long as there are separate national and sub-national identities, ideologies, and value systems.  Most of international relations consists of balancing interests that can only be partially reconciled, if at all.  Threats and intimidation are still common coins of the realm. 

But globalization is not just about how many Toyotas are sold in Saudi Arabia or Iowa, USA.  There has been a trans- or supra-national effect of globalization which can no longer be ignored, at the social, cultural, and political level as well as through finance and trade.  One hopes that authorities in Iran come to this realization soon.  Because the interstate competition between our nations is now claiming people who represent some of the key founding principles of both our countries, in the best sense of the word “principled.”  

Trading and interrogating true spies is one thing; we’ve all studied the Cold War, and people who join intelligence agencies as operatives know what they’re in for when they join.  But interrogating and imprisoning truly global citizens who clearly exist across multiple societies and state boundaries is beyond the pale.  I am as outraged about this as I would be if (for instance) Gianni Picco were imprisoned; it just ought to be clear, by now, that a norm has developed in regard to such individuals.  Most people are clearly defined and described as nationalist; they define themselves and their own actions in traditional terms.  But not all, and certainly not Haleh.   

More to the point, I have come to realize that I cannot in good conscience attend the event in question if she is not released (demonstrably unharmed) prior to my trip, despite the engagement-focused, positive-sum vision of the Ravand Institute.  I do hope that the increasingly global efforts to secure her release are effective and successful – indeed, looking at the Washington Post article in the link above, one can see that a Kuwaiti Economic Society and the Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo, together with some American organizations, have already helped construct a common website geared toward securing her timely release. 

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