Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American scholar who was released on bail last month after spending three months in an Iranian prison, was allowed to leave the country early today, The Washington Post reported. Ms. Esfandiari, who is director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, flew to Austria, where she was to be met by her husband, Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University historian.

Ms. Esfandiari had traveled to Iran in December to visit her 93-year-old mother and lost her passport in a robbery on her way to the airport on December 30. After that began a harrowing ordeal of interrogations and eventual incarceration. The Iranian government accused her of espionage and of trying to further a “soft” revolution to overthrow the hard-line Islamic regime. It was unclear after her release from prison whether she would have to stay in the country and face trial. Her arrest had led to widespread protests from American scholars. —Charles Huckabee