Welcome, this is Anastasia Glova for Cato Daily Podcast, Monday, June 4th.

Tehran continues its detention of four Iranian-American scholars and journalists arrested earlier this month on

charges of alleged espionage.

The case of Middle East scholar Halle-Sfundiori has received the most international

attention in the incident. She stands accused of promoting a soft

revolution against Iran's Islamic government.

Keda's foreign policy analyst Justin Logan comments on the situation.

Why is Tehran convinced that American scholars and think tankers are involved in some sort of velvet revolution plot to overthrow the Iranian government?

Well, your guess is as good as mine, really.

In this particular case, particularly in the case of Mrs. Fondiari,

there's just really no evidence to support the idea that she has any ambitions of

overthrowing the sitting government in Tehran. The body of her scholarly work is

very dispassionate. She has been criticized in America for being not critical

enough in many cases of the regime in Tehran. So there's really no, at least from this vantage point in Washington no plausible

Rationale for the Iranians to believe that she's actually trying to overthrow the government there there's also the additional question that if the

regime in Tehran needs to be worried about a scholar like Dr. Asfandiorari, it has much bigger problems

than many of us had ever suspected.

The idea that an Iranian American scholar visiting her 93 year old grandmother

is a threat to the national security of the regime in Tehran should that be the case that tells

us a lot about how the Iranians view their own position domestically.

What kind of evidence has Tehran put forward to suggest that Espandiorari and the other scholars are in fact engaged in espionage?

Well, not much is the short answer.

...