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| Or at least that's how Iran is defining them. |
The arrest brings to four the number of Iranians with US passports being held in Iranian jails or being prevented from leaving Iran.
Tajbakhsh, 45, who was in Tehran researching drug addiction and AIDS, was detained on 11 May but the news became public only on Wednesday. The former World Bank consultant is accused by the authorities of coming to Iran for Soros with the aim of organising a non-violent revolt against the theocratic regime.
Haleh Esfandiari, 67, the other US academic of Iranian origin, in jail in Tehran since 8 May is also accused of complicty with the Hungarian-born Soros.
The Ministry of Intelligence, in a statement, alleges that the involvement of Soros and his Iranian consultant in a plot to overthrow the regime was revealed in a full confession by Haleh Esfandiari. According to the Iranian intelligence service, the foundation headed by Soros was seeking to finance and organise "a coloured revolution like that which happened in recent years in Serbia and in some former Soviet republics".
The same accusation is made against Parnaz Azima, a journalist of Radio Farda, a Farsi language broadcaster, based in Prague and financed by the US Congress. Parnaz Azima, who is not in detention but whose travel documents have been confiscated, was asked on Wednesday morning to provide a 350,000 Euro caution to be allowed to leave the country. "My client has been accused of propaganda against the regime and therefore has to pay a caution, which according to the judge corresponds to the salaries received in these years for her work for the radio" said lawyer Mohammad Hossein Aghasi.
An orange, rose or velvet revolution seems to be an obsession of the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The four citizens with double US Iranian citizenship, currently detained in Iran, are the only ones accused of wanting to organise a civi and not a violent revolt against the regime.
The very same charge was raised last year against a wellknown Iranian intellectual Ramin Jahanbeglu, who is currently free on bail i awaiting trial. Many feminists and almost all the leaders of the student movement in Iran are accused of collaborating with internaitonal bodies planning a "coloured revolution".
Civil society initiatives to promote democracy and defend human rights, according to the Iranian intelligence ministry, are simply "a cover" for trying to overthrow the regime.
Esfandiari has not been allowed to meet her lawyers at Tehran's Evin prison where she is detained. Nobel Peace Prize Shirin Ebadi along with other Iranian lawyers are representing Esfandiari, one of the leading US authorities on Iran. She works for the Washington-based think tank Woodrow Wilson Centre. A spokesman for Tehran's prosecution's office claimed she had refused to be represented by a lawyer. Rights groups and US authorities have called on Iranian authorities to free Esfandiari, who was visiting Tehran to