Opinion: Iran Should Free Ebrahim Yazdi

(Dec. 6) -- On my first trip to Iran in 1996, I met a rumpled U.S.-educated academic long marginalized by the Iranian government.

At the time, I did not think that the man -- Ebrahim Yazdi -- was much of a threat to the clerical-led regime. But those running Iran now obviously have a different view. And on Oct. 1, Yazdi -- now 80 and in poor health after open-heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer -- became Iran's oldest political prisoner.

Arrested at a funeral in Isfahan, Yazdi was later sent to Tehran's dreaded Evin Prison, joining about 500 other democracy advocates, journalists and two hapless Americans, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. On Friday, Yazdi was reportedly taken to the prison hospital.

Political prisoners and human rights are not likely to be high on the agenda as the U.S. and diplomats from other nations sit down today in Geneva with Iranian officials for the first time in more than a year. Understandably, Iran's nuclear program is the main focus.

But the Americans and their allies should make time to talk about freeing Yazdi and the other detainees. Iran's responsibilities go beyond keeping its treaty obligations not to build a nuclear bomb; they include living up to other international treaties and affording basic rights to the Iranian people.

Yazdi -- like so many of his fellow prisoners -- has not been charged with any crime. An MIT-educated molecular geneticist who spent 1967-79 in Houston at the Baylor College of Medicine, Yazdi was a committed political activist who became Iran's foreign minister after the 1979 revolution. He resigned a few months later after Iranian students seized U.S. diplomats as hostages and the then leader of the country, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, refused to let the Americans go.

In 1994, Yazdi succeeded to the leadership of the Freedom Party, a small but venerable political group that has sought democracy for Iran for decades.

When I interviewed him back in 1996, he complained that he was not allowed to give interviews to the Iranian press or even to teach. The authorities had told him "your genetics are liberal," he said. He compared Iranian rulers to their fundamentalist counterparts in Afghanistan, the Taliban, and said "there is only one way -- one solution -- and that is democratization, the nonviolent legal transformation of political power."

That message was embraced by millions of Iranians who filled the streets of Iran's cities following June 2009 presidential elections, which many believe were won by an opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, not by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranian authorities have succeeded over the past year in suppressing the so-called Green Movement, but pockets of protest erupt from time to time, particularly on university campuses. More disturbances are possible on Tuesday, the anniversary of 1953 student demonstrations following a U.S.-backed coup that restored Iran's monarchy. The clerical regime that replaced that monarchy has now become even more repressive and is destroying those who once helped bring it to power.

A Dec. 2 open letter to Iran's government signed by 188 Iranian intellectuals and professionals calls for Yazdi's unconditional release, saying that "the life of this well-known political reformer, who has devoted his life to freedom and independence for Iran, is in serious danger."

According to the letter, Yazdi's wife has been allowed to visit him only once -- after he had been in Evin for 40 days.

"Medication and special medical equipment brought by his family to Evin Prison has been rejected," the letter said. "We ask all freedom loving people around the world to ask for the release of Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi and to pressure the Iranian government to release all political prisoners and cease the threats of arrest and intimidation of all nonviolent civil political activists."

The Obama administration should echo that call and the Iranian government should listen. Only then will Iran begin to receive the respect it says it desires and deserves.