Roxana Saberi: No "Damsel In Distress"

Some of you may be wondering what all the fuss was about American-born journalist Roxana Saberi, who spent four months in an Iranian prison before she was acquitted of being a spy for the United States.

Saberi's plight got plenty of attention in the local media because she hails from Fargo, North Dakota, and began her career at the local NBC station. She has since worked as a freelancer for news organizations such as CNN, NPR, and the BBC. She's also 32 and a former Miss North Dakota, which makes her marketable to advertisers who want to reach women whether they pay attention to the news or not.

Is Saberi really the "damsel in distress" that the media made her out to be? She was originally sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison on espionage charges, in a brief trial held in secret. But she was given the chance to explain her side in an appeals court.

In the appeal, Saberi's attorney says that, while working as a translator for a group connected to Iran's ruling clerics, she admitted to copying confidential documents pertaining to the U.S. war on Iraq, but did not give to American officials. She apologized and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

And all this time, we were told that Saberi was working on a book describing life in the country for which she has dual citizenship. That still might be true, but who knows?

The Saberi case also got caught in the middle of U.S.-Iranian relations, which are strained at the moment. President Barack Obama has been trying to normalize relations with a country that once held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and is now accused of having a nuclear weapons program aimed at wiping Israel off the map.

Now that Saberi is on her way back to the United States, you're going to be seeing a lot of her in the next few weeks on talk shows from Oprah to "Today". Then she's going to fade into obscurity, just like the last American female journalist who had the misfortune of spending quality time in a Middle Eastern country against her will. Whatever happened to her?