Iran Detains Fourth Iranian-American

Iran's confirmation that it has detained a fourth Iranian-American, a peace activist, seems certain to further rile relations between the two countries, already tense over Iran's nuclear program.

The United States has criticized the detentions but Iran insists America has no right to interfere.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, confirmed at his weekly news briefing Sunday that Iranian-American Ali Shakeri is being held.

On Friday, the semi-official ISNA news agency first reported the detention and investigation of Shakeri, of Lake Forest, California, by the security department of the Tehran prosecutor's office.

Shakeri, a founding board member of the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, is the fourth dual citizen detained in Iran in recent months.

Iranian officials previously confirmed the detentions of three other Iranian-Americans: scholar Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute; and Parnaz Azima, a journalist who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda.

All three are accused of endangering Iran's national security and of espionage, according to a judiciary spokesman. It is not known if Shakeri has been accused of specific wrongdoing.

They were in Iran visiting family or working, according to the U.S. State Department, relatives and employers.

U.S. President George W. Bush has demanded that Iran "immediately and unconditionally" release them, and has denied that they were spying for the United States. Family, colleagues and employers also denied the allegations.

Bush's remarks have drawn criticism from Iranian officials, who accuse him of interfering in Iran's internal affairs.

Iran has also escalated accusations against the United States, saying last month it uncovered spy rings organized by the U.S. and its Western allies.

Meanwhile, five Iranian officials detained in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil by U.S. troops in January, remain in U.S. custody. The U.S. military has said they are suspected of links to a network supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents, an accusation that Iran has denied.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the detentions of the Iranian-Americans were unwarranted but would not stop the United States from trying to engage Iran on other matters, including its disputed nuclear program and alleged support of insurgents in Iraq.

"We take seriously the holding of any American anywhere in the world where they are being wrongly held and where they are being accused of things that clearly are untrue," Rice said. "It just shows again what kind of regime this is."

The United States and its allies are looking to increase the pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear uranium enrichment program at a meeting starting Monday of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board.

Iran insists it wants the technology only to meet future power needs and argues it is entitled to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But suspicions the program could be used to produce fissionable material for weapons have led to two sets of U.N. sanctions over its refusal to freeze enrichment.

The detentions of Iranian-Americans could be an obstacle to a second round of direct American-Iranian talks on Iraq this month. The talks have been billed as a possible window to better relations.

The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors in Iraq met last month in Baghdad and although they limited the agenda to Iraq's instability, the talks were groundbreaking as the first formal diplomatic meeting in nearly three decades.

After the meeting, Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said the two sides would meet again in less than a month.

In the interview with the AP, Rice said the United States has not yet determined "when and if it makes sense" to continue the dialogue with Iran.

On Sunday, Hosseini said Iran had not agreed to a second round and that the Iranians were studying the results of the May 28 talks.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki later signaled Iran would be willing to continue the talks.

"Iraq should not be a scene for settling scores with any country. All should help in removing current problems of (Iraq)," Mottaki said.

The U.S. also has expressed concern about Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who the United States says has been missing since March after traveling to an Iranian resort island on private business.

Hosseini reiterated Sunday that Iran has no information about Levinson.

He also accused the United States of using scientific and research cooperation as a guise to work against Iran. It was not clear what he referred to, but many academics have criticized Iran for arresting scholars.

The United States broke ties with Tehran after the storming of the U.S. Embassy there in 1979 and the seizure of U.S diplomats as hostages. Iran held the Americans for 444 days, and the episode sealed Iran as the principal U.S. adversary in the Middle East.