http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/04/journey-to-tehr.html

April 22, 2009 3:58 PM

So, it’s been a wild couple of days.

After the “This Week” show on Sunday — and after five years of requests — I received word from the Iranian interests section that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had agreed to an interview with me.

But there was a catch: I had to be there by Wednesday at the latest.

The earliest plane out was Monday night, which meant that I arrived in Tehran at about 2:30am this morning. Spent a couple of hours cooling my heels in the “commercially important persons” lounge of the airport.

And, after my fingerprints were scanned into the computer, I got to the guest house at 5:00am.

Out the door again at 8:00am for a meeting with President Ahmadinejad’s press adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a polite and smiling man with a prematurely snow-white beard.

Javanfekr wanted to know what I wanted to talk about.

We sat over tea and chatted for an hour about just about everything on the table between the U.S. and Iran. What surprised me most was the spokesman’s skepticism about who really caused the Sept. 11th attacks.

Suffice to say, conspiracy theories are alive and well at the highest levels of the Iranian government. Like the Holocaust, this is a subject they will leave for further study.

While the crew set up in the garden of the presidential compound, I strolled around the gardens with some sour cherry juice, on what was a really beautiful Spring day. Perfect weather here in Tehran.

Every few minutes, a few more advisers from the presidential office came out to check on things. Shortly after noon, the president himself came out for our talk.

We had met once before on one of his visits to New York at a roundtable of journalists, and he said he remembered me. Maybe because we’re about the same size.

Then we sat down for our talk on President Obama and the prospect of a “new beginning” between the U.S. and Iran.

We’ll play the interview Sunday on “This Week,” which includes some spirited exchanges, as you might imagine, on the nuclear talks, the Holocaust, and who’s really to blame for the breakdown in U.S. – Iran relations.

The president –who’s facing his own re-election challenge on June 12 –seems of two minds. He’s both caught between his desire for a new relationship with the United States, and his determination not to back down on any issue of importance.

We, of course, also talked about  imprisoned American journalist Roxana Saberi. I asked the president, as a goodwill gesture, if he would accept President Obama’s word that she’s not a spy, and also asked to go see her myself.

Fine with him, he said, but it’s not his decision.

“Let’s see if our judiciary allows for that, sure. But if they do not allow for that, no. I am afraid not,” Ahmadinejad told me.

He sent me to the judiciary department. We made the request by phone right away and even went to the offices to make the request in person but we couldn’t get beyond the gates.

Instead, I drove out to northern Tehran to Roxana’s apartment, where her father, Reza Saberi, a philosopher, poet and professor, and mother, Akiko Saberi, a pathologist from Japan, have been staying since Roxana’s arrest in late January.

For the first time, her mother told me the circumstances of the arrest that happened in Roxana’s apartment, on the fifth floor of a small apartment building, in a quiet back alley. The police came in at night, went through her things, and took her away, said her mom.

Her parents were in pretty good spirits, considering. Partly because they had just seen Roxana on Monday, who ordered her mom not to worry.

They told me she looked frail and had lost some weight, but that she was in good spirits, too. She also informed them that she would begin a hunger strike tomorrow.

Both her parents tried to talk her out of it, which they had done before. But she refused.

“I tried to dissuade her but she said, ‘not this time’,” Reza Saberi told me. “She is, this time, determined to go on a hunger strike because she says she doesn’t deserve to be in there in the prison, she hasn’t done anything wrong. She should not be there.”

For the first time, her father also gave details about her “confession.” She told him it was coerced and that they scared her with threats, including a threat to kill her.

“She said they coerced her, they scared her … they frightened her that if she doesn’t sign it they go in there and kill her,” Reza Saberi said.

He said his daughter signed the confession only when she was promised that she would be released if she did. Her father also pointed out that the confession has no legal force because no lawyer was present. Roxana later recanted in the presence of her lawyer and in court.

Both her parents seem cautiously confident that Roxana’s lawyers will be more successful on the appeal, which could be decided within a week.

But they said they fear she’s being used as a political pawn to force confessions, or perhaps a prison exchange with the United States.

The case is starting to get more attention here in Iran, which may be one reason that both President Ahmadinejad and the chief judge here have said that the case should be reviewed and that Roxana’s rights should be fully protected.

Before I left the apartment, Akiko sat at Roxana’s piano (she told me Roxana not only played but composed songs as well) and shyly played a few bars of a Japanese ballad.

Then she pointed to a piece of calligraphy on Roxana’s mantle, which had been painted by her father, which Akiko said gives her peace of mind about her daughter.

“I interpret it as peace of mind, peace be with you, calm, serene, no matter what happens, we love you,” she said.

It’s a little after midnight here.

I’m heading to bed.

–George Stephanopoulos