Iran criticized President Bush on Sunday for demanding that Tehran release three Iranian-American scholars and a journalist who have been detained for alleged espionage. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry called the president’s remarks “an obvious case of intervention in our domestic affairs,” the Associated Press reported.

The four detainees are Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant with George Soros’s Open Society Institute; Parnaz Azima, a journalist with the U.S.-backed Radio Farda; and Ali Shakeri, a peace activist and founding board member at the University of California at Irvine’s Center for Citizen Peace Building.

Iran has accused Ms. Esfandiari of seeking to promote a “soft” revolution against the country’s Islamic government and last week formally charged her with espionage. Her detention has prompted a wave of protests among Middle East scholars. —Charles Huckabee