Here’s another ghastly development out of Iran. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson International Center, has been seized by the regime and placed in prison while she was visiting her 93-year-old mother there. Esfandiari is an Iranian national who has lived in America for a quarter of a century. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, president of the Wilson Center, says that Iranian officials are “pressuring” her to make false confessions about the center’s activities.

Esfandiari is a particularly puzzling choice for Iran’s hostage-taking, as The Washington Post explains:

Esfandiari has brought in many scholars and analysts from Tehran to speak at the Wilson Center, one of the few places in Washington to offer a robust range of opinions on Iran. “The irony is, in Washington she faced criticism for bringing in people who were sympathetic to the Iranian government,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “By detaining her the Iranian government only eliminates an advocate for diplomacy and strengthens the voices of those in Washington who say the regime is cruel and should not be engaged.”

It is, of course, quite possible to be evil and stupid simultaneously.