Iranian Americans

Yom Kippur, the holiest and most somber day of the Jewish calendar, is a time for repentance, traditionally reserved for fasting and intense prayer. But scores of Iranian American Jews in Los Angeles, many of whom congregate in just a handful of synagogues across the city, aren't just looking for forgiveness on the Day of Atonement. They're looking for love. Facing enormous pressure from their families to marry within the community, many of these young people -- and their matchmaking relatives -- say they use the day to scope out potential romantic interests and tap into vast social networks to get the scoop on prospective candidates.

In his bid to become this city's first Iranian American mayor, Vice Mayor Jimmy Delshad was in danger Wednesday of losing his City Council seat altogether. After Tuesday's balloting, he held only a seven-vote lead over third-place finisher Steve Webb, with 892 provisional and absentee ballots to be counted Friday. Nancy Krasne received the most votes of the six candidates, with 2,486 votes. The top two finishers in the race gain seats on the five-member council.

Jimmy Delshad, 66, elected to his second term on the Beverly Hills City Council by a 171-vote margin, will probably become the first Iranian-born mayor in the country, given the results of a final vote count Wednesday. "There's no guarantee, but that's the tradition," said City Clerk Byron Pope of Beverly Hills about the current vice mayor's advancement to the top post. The position of mayor is bestowed on an annual rotating basis.

A jailed Iranian American academic was charged with setting up a network to overthrow the Islamic establishment, the Iranian government announced. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has been held since early May. Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, denied the allegations as "totally without foundation."

A U.S. and Iranian citizen who visited Iran this year has not been heard from since March, and a UC Irvine institute he is affiliated with said it was concerned. Ali Shakeri is a California businessman who serves on an advisory board to the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, which studies how citizens can promote peace in divided societies. A Human Rights Watch report quoted unidentified associates of Shakeri as saying he was "being detained by the Iranian authorities."

Ali Shakeri is admired for diplomacy through wit. He has a knack, said fellow board members at UC Irvine's Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, for cutting through tension with a well-timed joke. He has kidded tirelessly to knit together Orange County's large Iranian American community and has taken his lessons home, sharing meals with another board member who is Jewish. In March, Shakeri told colleagues he was flying to Tehran; his mother was ailing.

Two Iranian Americans detained on charges of spying have "accepted that they carried out some activities," an Iranian judge was quoted as saying. The Iranian judiciary last month said academic Haleh Esfandiari and social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh were accused of spying. The United States has denied that they are spies.

Five Iranians imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq since January will probably be released in the next few weeks, according to some U.S. and Iraqi officials, a development that could help ease months of escalating conflict between Washington and Tehran. The Iranians, who were seized on suspicion of spying during a raid in Irbil, in northern Iraq, are up for a six-month review of their cases at the end of June, the officials said.

THREE OF THE FOUR Iranian Americans who have been detained in recent months in Iran -- Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant to the World Bank and the Open Society Institute; and Parnaz Azima, a reporter for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda -- have received support for their freedom from powerful organizations and people in the United States and elsewhere.

SO FAR, four Iranian Americans have been detained by the Iranian government and charged with espionage. The most well-known case is that of Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was detained and later arrested after traveling to Tehran to see her 93-year-old mother late last year. The most recent case is that of Ali Shakeri, a "peace activist" from Irvine, who was arrested in mid-May.