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ROXANA SABERI: I'm of course very happy to be free and to be with my parents again.

LISA MULLINS: Iranian-American Journalist Roxana Saberi spoke to reporters today in Tehran. These were her first public works since she was released from an Iranian jail yesterday.

SABERI: I want to thank all the people all over the world, which I'm just finding out about really, who, whether they knew me or not, helped me and my family during this period. I don't have any specific plans for the moment, I just want to be with my parents and my friends and to relax. Thank you very much.

MULLINS: Roxana Saberi spent more than three months in Tehran's Evin Prison. Iranian authorities accused and convicted her of spying for the United States. Saberi, who worked in Iran for several western news outlets, including The World, denies being a spy. According to one of her lawyers, she did admit having an Iranian government document in her possession. That's what an appeals court convicted her of before reducing her sentence and letting Roxana Saberi go free. The U.S. government welcomed the move as a humanitarian gesture. But as Cyrus Farivar reports, some would argue that Saberi's release was always about politics.

CYRUS FARIVAR: Iranian journalist and blogger Omid Memarian offers this simple analysis of Roxana Saberi's case.

OMID MEMARIAN: The release of Roxana Saberi shows the political nature of this case.

FARIVAR: That's a common conclusion among Iran watchers these days. Memarian, who now lives in California, himself was imprisoned in Iran for his online writings five years ago. Like Saberi, he too was held in Evin Prison. So he knows a thing or two about Iranian courts.

MEMARIAN: It is impossible that somebody in the Iranian judiciary gets eight years prison, and then after appealing, it changes to nothing. It basically shows how the court was led by political motives, not real charges.

FARIVAR: It seems clear, Memarian says, that Saberi was targeted by more extreme members of the Iranian government, while relatively moderate voices seemed to have heeded the international call for her release. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may have tried to play both sides. He wrote a letter urging the appeals court to be fair in its review of Saberi's case. But Ahmadinejad is also up for a re-election next month. So, he's clamping down on the press, according to Hadi Ghaemi, of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

HADI GHAEMI: I think much of that has to do with the nervousness of his government that his candidacy is in jeopardy. He may not have much chance of re-election and as such they are moving and controlling all levers that they can to manipulate the election process and make sure that any coverage of him is favorable inside Iran.

FARIVAR: The crackdown goes well beyond the Saberi case. Two months ago, an Iranian blogger, Omidreza Mirsayafi, died while in custody. And Iranian blogging pioneer Hossein Derakhshan has been in jail since November. Two Iranian doctors are also still in prison on charges of working to create a soft revolution in Iran. But the international attention generated by Roxana Saberi's imprisonment and release could help those who remain behind bars, says Roozbeh Mirebrahimi. He's an Iranian journalist now living in New York who was imprisoned in Iran with Memarian back in 2004.

ROOZBEH MIREBRAHIMI: The good situation for the Iranian regime is the quiet, for every case in Iran. If nobody is talking about the one case, they can do anything they want.

FARIVAR: The question is, "How long will the international community keep pressuring Iran on this issue now that Roxana Saberi is free?" For The World, I'm Cyrus Farivar.

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