Iran TV shows footage of two detained Iranian-Americans

    TEHRAN, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Iran's state-run television on Wednesday aired video footage of two detained Iranian-Americans academics, in which they talked about their links to Washington's drive to promote democracy in the Iran.

    The documentary program, entitled "Under the Name of Democracy", showed footage of Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, who have been accused of acting against Iran's national security.

    Esfandiari, 67, head of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said she had organized academic conferences in Iran that brought speakers from the Islamic republic to the United States.

    She said Washington's aim "is to bring about a change in the decision making bodies in Iran from within, (and) to bring about a change in the decision makers themselves."

    Esfandiari was arrested last December when she was in Iran to visit her 93-year-old mother. The Iranian authorities have accused her of harming national security.

    In a separate section, Tajbakhsh, 45, an urban planning consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute, said the U.S. administration gave money to the Soros Foundation reflects the fact that Soros and the United States share the same views on Iran.

    Tajbakhsh was also jailed for similar charges that he wanted to seek a "Velvet Revolution" in Iran.

    There are still two other Iranian-Americans faced such kind of charges, but all of their families and colleagues had denied the allegations.

    The detaining issue of the four Iranian-American academics have escalated the current tensions between Iran and the United States.