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In late December, I received a New Year's e-mail from a former Iranian diplomat. The contact surprised me. I had known the man when I lived in Tehran from 2004 to '07, but I hadn't heard from him in more than two years. In 2007, as the Ahmadinejad administration began tarring its ideological enemies as foreign stooges, he cut relations with me.

I hadn't become less of a liability in the interim. In 2009, during the postelection unrest, I was arrested at Tehran's airport as I was boarding a flight and transferred to Evin Prison. Though the Greek government intervened to obtain my prompt release, others were less fortunate. A government-issued indictment accused many green movement sympathizers of being pawns of America, Israel or Britain and seeking to execute a velvet revolution. Most were sentenced to long prison terms or execution.