Iran says judge to decide on 4 Iranian-Americans charged with endangering national security

TEHRAN, Iran — A judge will decide within the next few days whether to indict or free four Iranian-Americans charged with endangering national security, Iran's judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

Iran's foreign minister, meanwhile, said the United States would "regret" its decision to detain five Iranian officials in Iraq — a case that has further riled U.S.-Iranian relations, already strained over Iran's nuclear program.

Ali Reza Jamshid, the judicial spokesman, said a judge would complete his preliminary investigation into the charge against the four Iranian-Americans "within the next two or three days."

Jamshidi said all four Iranian-Americans have been charged with acting against national security. Several weeks ago, he said they had also been charged with espionage, but he did not repeat that charge Tuesday.

The four include Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who was jailed in Iran in early May.

The others are Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute; Parnaz Azima, a journalist who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding.

Azima is out of jail on bail but not allowed to leave the country; the other three remain in custody.

President Bush has demanded that Iran "immediately and unconditionally" release the four scholars and activists held there. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently told The Associated Press the four were accused "of things that clearly are untrue."

Family, colleagues and employers have also denied the allegations.

The U.S. military has said the five Iranians detained in Iraq in January are suspected of links to a network supplying arms to insurgents — an accusation that Iran has denied.

Iran claimed the men were diplomats and that the building U.S. troops occupied was a government liaison office. It also says the five were the guests of the Iraqi government and has demanded their release. Iraqi government officials have also called for their release, along with compensation for damages.

"We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal act," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying. He did not elaborate.