I interacted with him and he was a fan of IranAffairs.com -- often sending me quite a bit of traffic from his popular blog. I also read his posts on Gulf2000. He was simply not a fan of the Neoconservative agenda on Iran, and also refused to join the mindless demonization of Ahmadinejad, arguing that AN had more support and popularity than his opponents (whether inside or outside of Iran) wanted to acknowledge. He also defended Iran's nuclear program. And yet he also was a critic of the regime in Iran too, and did in fact travel to Israel (a deliberate poke in the eye to Iran's legal system).
In the sort of highly polarized environment of the debate over Iran, it becomes easy to paint people who insist on careful, nuanced thinking as "Agents of the IRI" or "Spies for the West" etc. I can't help but hope that he will be free soon, raising shit and being "maddeningly mercurial" some more.
Anyway, as a sidenote, I should mention that Christopher Dickey is being a little dishonest in how he represents MEMRI as simply "translating politically-sensitive articles". MEMRI is obviously an Israeli front organization in their propaganda war, as other journalists have noted, which deliberately concentrates on translating articles that are inflammatory and present a false view of the Mideast but which, purely by coincidence, corresponds to the NeoCon view. (Note also that MEMRI doesn't bother translating the inflammatory stuff from the Israeli media.) While Christopher Dickey notes that Yigal Carmon is a "former" Israeli intelligence agent, he forgets to mention that another founder of MEMRI is Meyrav Wurmser, a central figure in the NeoCon cabal in Washington and who along with Carmon are far-rightists opposed to peace with the Palestinians, and that the other staffers at MEMRI are also "former" Israeli intelligence agents or far-right associates of the pro-Israeli lobby in the US. Juan Cole noted MEMRIs bias too, (which resulted in a laughable lawsuit threat by MEMRI):
"On more than one occasion I have seen, say, a bigoted Arabic article translated by MEMRI and when I went to the source on the web, found that it was on the same op-ed page with other, moderate articles arguing for tolerance. These latter were not translated."
So how dishonest is Christopher Dickey being in presenting MEMRI as just some benign translation service? Well, I always try to play a little mind game as a test of intellectual honesty: imagine if the tables were turned, and MEMRI was headed by a former Iranian intelligence agent who, acting in league with current and former Iranian officials and intelligence agents, made a point of translating only inflammatory, bigoted and Islamophobic articles from the Israeli or US press -- how would Chris Dickey characterize such an organization? As simply a translation service? I think you get the picture.
I miss Hoder's blog posts, too. Speaking from experiences right here in the US, it ain't easy being an outspoken Iranian. I can only imagine how it is for Hoder, wherever he's being kept.
Totally agree about MEMRI. I actually had to inform the kids over at the NIAC blog about the nature of that (ex-IDF intelligence) "translation" service.
Posted by: Pirouz | December 04, 2009 at 04:03 AM