Renowned journalist and academic Haleh Esfandiari used to fly from Washington, D.C., to Tehran every Christmas to visit her elderly mother. This pleasant routine changed dramatically in 2007 when Esfandiari was arrested and charged with plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, with a little help from the United States. The soft-spoken intellectual (and grandmother of two) spent months in Evin Prison, sleeping on the floor and enduring harrowing interrogations, until an international outcry hastened her release.

Yesterday I spoke with Esfandiari at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she is the director of the Middle East Program.

At 67 years of age, you were put in solitary confinement in a Tehran prison. The physical stress was horrendous. As for the mental stress, was your age a plus or a minus?

Haleh Esfandiari: It was a plus, because whenever I thought about my wonderful life and family and friends, I knew I had already experienced everything a person could wish for. I had a wonderful childhood in Iran. I enjoyed going to college in Austria. I was successful, I think, in my career. So I thought, “If worse comes to worse, and I am sentenced to life in prison…so what? I have had a beautiful life.”