An Iranian blogger who visited Israel at least twice in the past three years, and who was twice interviewed here by The Jerusalem Post about his efforts to “humanize” Israel for Iranians and vice-versa, has reportedly been arrested in Teheran and admitted to spying for Israel. According to a report in Jahan News, which is close to Iran’s intelligence community, quoted by the Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar, the blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, returned to Iran about three weeks ago, having previously been based in Canada. “Prior to his return,” Javedanfar writes on his middleeastanalyst.com Web site, Derakhshan had “started attacking [former Iranian president] Ayatollah [Hashemi] Rafsanjani in his blog. It is possible that he fell foul of a power struggle within Iran.”
