Iran has imprisoned yet another Western-linked person on charges of espionage. An Iranian court sentenced Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-American doctoral student at Princeton, to 10 years. Wang, an American academic specializing in late 19th and early 20th century Eurasian history, was conducting research in Iran on the late Qajar dynasty. He had publicly documented his cooperation with Iranian scholars to collect and digitize Persian manuscripts.
Iran has long been infamous for imprisoning foreigners for political dissent or espionage. Though some detainees have had obvious political or national security motives, other detainees have spent a few months in prison without ever being charged before being freed as mysteriously as they were arrested. Iranian security forces have frequently targeted academics, even when they are working with local contacts. In April 2016, Ahmadreza Jalali was arrested after attending an academic conference, to which he had an official invitation from Tehran University.
Wang's sentencing demonstrates that the work continues within Iran to reconcile government attempts to rejuvenate the economy and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attempts to maintain relevancy and its hold on security. Along with using prisoners as political pawns, the IRGC touts arrests as proof that it is living up to its charge. Thus, more arrests will likely be made, given that the IRGC ultimately controls the fate of foreign passport holders coming in and out of Iran and that Iran's tourism sector forecasts a steady increase in visitors over the next decade.
