[5] Tajbakhsh was set to begin a full-time academic teaching position at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York City on September 8, 2009, but was unable to do so as a result of his incarceration.

[8] In 2006, he completed a three-year study of the local government sector in Iran with a focus on the reform of the inter-governmental system and its impact on urban policymaking.

He was accused of crimes against national security for working with American organizations such as the Open Society Institute and Gulf 2000 project, and held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison for more than four months.

[14] Following a global campaign for his release involving high-level diplomatic efforts, he was allowed to leave Evin Prison on parole and be reunited with his wife in Tehran on September 19, 2007.

The protest movement sparked Iran's greatest political and popular upheaval since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, compared in some reports to civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s.

[26][27][28] Public statements of support and demands for the charges to be dropped and for Tajbakhsh to be released were issued by universities, nongovernmental organizations, celebrities, politicians—from rock singer Sting to the European Union and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

[29][30] The White House called the charges baseless, stating that Tajbakhsh "has dedicated his life to fostering greater understanding between Iran and the international community.

[32][33][34] He had spent much of 2009 in solitary confinement until being transferred to a villa on the Evin Prison grounds, where he was detained together with prominent reformists who had also been tried in the mass show trial.