Saturday, April 18, 2009

Iran convicts Roxana Saberi

I suppose there's at least some remote chance that Roxana Saberi, the young Iranian-American journalist working in Iran and arrested in January, actually was spying for the United States. She was just convicted of espionage and sentenced to 7 years. But I doubt it. I suspect that, as this now-apparently-pointless Register editorial suggested, that it had to do with looking hard-line and stirring up anti-American sentiment in advance of the June 12 election. Too bad. Sooner or later the U.S. and Iran are likely to have to come to some kind of terms -- assuming we aren't about to move into an era of strategic non-engagement, which might not be a bad thing but which I don't expect. But Iran keeps making it difficult.

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