USC professor Muhammad Sahimi knew he risked interrogation or arrest while visiting Iran because of his outspokenness about the need for political reform in his homeland.
But it wasn't until this summer that he canceled his travel plans. He deemed a family trip to Iran too dangerous after his friend, Ali Shakeri, a mild-mannered businessman and peace activist from Lake Forest, was thrown in a Tehran prison.
"A lot of people are afraid to go to Iran," he said, "because they say if a guy like Shakeri, who always advocated peace and negotiations, gets arrested, then who is safe?"
The plight of Shakeri has created a dilemma for politically active Iranian Americans: Do they lobby for change in Iran, knowing that their words could land them in prison if they visit their homeland? Or do they keep quiet and preserve their ability to go home again?
Shakeri, 59, a businessman whose pro-democracy writings about Iran circulate on the Web, has been jailed for more than four months in Tehran. He had been on his way back from visiting his mother, who died while he was there.
Shakeri's case surprised the Iranian American community because he was seen as a moderate peace activist and a minor figure in Southern California. A board member for the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at UC Irvine, Shakeri garnered international attention when he became one of four dual Iranian American citizens detained in Iran this year. Two have since been released.
His family had been working quietly to free him until Friday, when his son, Kaveh Shakeri, broke the family's silence and implored authorities to release his father.
"Shakeri really sent shock waves," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based civic group. "Unlike the others, he was not a known figure on the national level. If someone like that gets taken, it becomes much more blurry who's a target and who's not."
That sentiment has rung especially true in Southern California, home to the world's largest community of Iranian emigres. Most settled in Southern California after the fall of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979. Centered in West Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and Orange County, they now number more than 500,000.
Like the Cuban exile community in South Florida and Vietnamese expatriates of Orange County's Little Saigon, many Iranian Americans in the U.S. are staunch advocates of democratic reform in their homeland. But they have had little success against the authoritative governments.
