WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM...

BLITZER: Other news we're following. She's a well-known academic here in Washington, an Iranian American who went back to Tehran for family reasons and is now in prison. She's not the only American in trouble there. CNN's Jill Doherty has the story. Jill?

JILL DOHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, she's being held in the notorious Evine (ph) prison in Iran where others have been tortured and died. Ironically her supporters say Haleh Esfandiari is a bridge- builder between Iran and the United States...

DOHERTY (voice-over): For four months Professor Shaul Bakash was sure he'd soon get a call saying his wife was finally free.

DOHERTY: Haleh Esfandiari, a prominent Iranian American scholar had flown to Iran to visit her 93-year-old mother. On the way back to Tehran airport three masked men brandishing knives stopped her car and stole her luggage and documents including her passport. Iranians officials wouldn't replace it. Instead, they subjected her to six weeks of interrogation. May 8, the 67-year-old Esfandiari was arrested and imprisoned, allowed only a few brief phone conversations with her mother...

DOHERTY: Iranian officials say Esfandiari is being arrested for crimes against national security. Her husband calls that a complete falsehood.

(on camera): Much of the questioning in prison centered on Esfandiari's work as the head of the Middle Eastern Program here at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars in Washington, DC.

(voice-over): Esfandiari's arrest is the latest in a series of detentions of intellectuals, journalists and Iranian American visitors orchestrated by the hard-line government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Experts on Iran say the Ahmadinejad government is paranoid about the United States' intentions towards Iran, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comments about a $75 million U.S. program to promote democracy in Iran.

AFSHIN MOLAVI, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: They feel that the United States wants to engage in regime change in Iran. They see this money that the United States has pledged for supporting dissidents and supporting dissidents and supporting democracy in Iran as interfering in their internal affairs...

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