She's Free! Iranian Court Overturns Roxana Saberi's Prison Sentence

That's it. The Iranian Supreme Court, such as it is, reversed the eight-year prison sentence imposed last month on Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi following a sham, one-day trial. The supreme court handed down a suspended, two-year sentence instead, and ordered Saberi freed. Saberi can leave Iran whenever she decides. Iran's shame isn't over. The Saberi sham is.

Watching the Saberi affair unfold--she was accused of variously absurd charges, from buying wine to operating without a reporter's license to spying--you get the sense that whoever is pulling the strings in Iran has a thing for Donald Trump and "The Apprentice." The affair had the feel of a reality show, as ridiculous and pathetic, and certainly staged, for those cast in its net, as it's been absorbing, in that roadside-wreck sense, for those of us looking on.

I don't mean that Roxana Saberi was in on the staging. Of course not. From the start what was obvious about her case was the degree to which the Iranian regime, or whatever roguish branch of the Iranian regime happened to be at the controls in those particular weeks, was willing to turn an innocent person into a pawn in Iran's positioning with the West--and within itself. Iran is in the midst of an identity crisis, an internal struggle over what sort of player it can or should be in the Middle East now that it's lost its revolution's most stabilizing foil (George W. Bush's belligerence). Reformists want to abandon the Ahmadinejad track of speechifying by the sword. Old Revolutionary Guard types, represented by Ahmadinejad, fear losing their grip on a power they take for granted. The Saberi affair was the public face of that internal struggle.

Iran's hard-liners needed a high-visibility commodity to bat around in American eyes, something, someone, to turn into an object lesson of Iran's juvenile compulsion to assert its supremacy in the face of the Great Satan. It found it in Saberi. She was not merely abused in the process, but mentally and symbolically violated.

All along, as Barack Obama was making his openings toward Iran and the Iranian political scene was bearing its fractures between regressives and reformists with the coming of the June 12 election, you got a sense that whoever was controlling the Saberi tragi-comedy (no secret who that one is) wasn't going to let it fester too long. That he was going to manufacture an Iranian advantage out of it. He was going to take a supreme offense against the dignity of a human being and the rule of law and perversely make of it an example of Iranian magnanimity. It's the old torturer's ploy of inflicting agony on a human being only to look the benevolent savior for halting it. It's disgusting.

It's also, when you think about it, the principle behind "The Apprentice," with Donald Trump playing the role of "Supreme Leader" and everyone at his feet calling him "Mr. Trump," slaving for his approval and hoping the ultimate punishment eludes them. The difference with Saberi, of course, is that she was the one unwilling actor in the deal. She was manipulated for public consumption. She endured. She went on hunger strike. Her parents endured. They held on to their dignity. And finally Roxana Saberi and her family prevailed.

Let's not fall for Iran's trick. Whoever was playing The Donald in Tehran must've also known that the Saberi affair had boxed Iran into a corner, making it seem more perfidious than assertive, more--let's put it simply--backward than remotely credible.

Iran didn't do Saberi a favor. It saved face. There is that. It may suggest an encouraging shift inside Iran. The momentum is still going Obama's way for a thaw--if the June 12 elections cooperate.

See Also:

• What's Iran's Beef With Roxana Saberi?
• Roxana Saberi's Sham Trial
• 8 Years in Iranian Lock-Up for Saberi
• Editorials in Support of Roxana Saberi
• Ali Khamenei Profile - Iran's Ayatollah and "Supreme Leader"
• What's a "Supreme Leader"?
• Iranian Parliamentary Elections: Reformists Rebuked
• Your Turn: Can Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution Survive?