In 2006, Iran had one of the world’s finest harm reduction programs, reaching even neglected populations such as prisoners and injecting drug users. Unfortunately, since the pioneers of Iran’s AIDS treatment programs, Drs. Kamiar and Arash Alaei, were sentenced to prison, that may no longer be the case. What’s more, the doctors’ arrest stands to block a valuable channel for soft diplomacy between two nations whose relations have been tense at best. A Nature magazine editorial explains:

Tehran’s Revolutionary Court last week sentenced the brothers Kamiar and Arash Alaei to, respectively, three- and six-year jail terms in the city’s notorious Evin prison on charges of being US stooges bent on fomenting a velvet revolution to overthrow the state.

One of the acts that apparently attracted suspicion was the brothers’ participation alongside US government officials in two US–Iranian health-diplomacy round tables held in the United States in 2006 and 2007. The meetings were run by the Aspen Institute, a non-governmental organization founded in 1950 to provide an impartial international forum on major policy issues. The chair of one of the sessions introduced it proudly as one of the “first formal dialogues for almost 25 years” between Iran and the United States.

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Such dialogue — ’smart power’ — should be encouraged by all sides, because cooperation in the relatively apolitical areas of medicine and science keeps open rare avenues of back-channel diplomacy. Unfortunately, ‘dumb power’ is currently prevailing. The action of the Iranian judiciary in this case can have only a chilling effect on such activities, and there have been ill-considered moves elsewhere.

Even Iranian President Ahmadinejad had lauded the Alaei’s work at a Columbia University talk in 2007, describing the doctors as “shining torches who shed light in order to remove darkness and the ambiguities around us in guiding humanity out of ignorance and perplexity.” If that’s the case, then he should release these visionaries from their senseless imprisonment.

President Ahmadinejad. Your country’s HIV-prevention programme has won respect in the Muslim world and beyond. As you said at Columbia University, the open scientific and medical dialogue needed to progress in issues such as the fight against AIDS must be above the contemporary realpolitik of broader political issues. We urge you today to request the appropriate authorities to review the cases of Arash and Kamiar Alaei so that the truth may prevail.