My last year's trip to Iran wasn't that easy

Disgusting personal attacks have risen in the past few months. They usually focus on who I am rather than what I say. But I think I have to address some of them here to clarify things and show how false they are.

This is one of the most common lines of attack on last year's visit to Iran:

He was able to go Iran and come back during the last election. At first, it was not believable for anybody because of the foul language he operated in his blog against the supreme leader. But it was true, he got a secret order from an exiled Iranian reporter (Masood Behnood) to go to Iran safely. And furthermore unbelievably, he could stay in Iran, do political activation in favor of left wingers and return Canada safely. (Source: Under the Veil)

My trip to Iran last year during the presidential elections was not that easy at the end.

As reported by Newsweek and AP later, I was detained by an official from the Ministry of Intelligence at the airport for a few hours, missed my return flight to London, threatened to stay or I'd be dragged out of the plane by a legal warrant, summoned to the Ministry of Intelligence building in Tehran, Serah-e Zarrabkhaaneh, interrogated for 5, 6 hours, and ultimately forced to sign an apology to be able to leave the country.

The well-behaved official, though, warned me not to write anything about the incident in my blog or I'd be formally prosecuted next time I was in Iran. But I didn't comply, since it was a silly and illogical demand.

Once I arrived in London, in a long Persian post, I described everything. I also posted something hinting at what happened in English. In a few days I received an email from that same official from his Hotmail account he gave me to send my apology to (Yes, they're quite high-tech!). He repeated his threat that I'd have a hard time next time I arrived in Tehran.

And the whole secret order thing from Behnoud etc. is too funny to even address. Absolutely no one thought it was a safe trip and they were all against it. But I'm a Capricorn. You know what I'm saying if you are one or live with one. :)

For the cynical minds, there are enough people who can testify on what I was going through those days. Among them, My father, my cousin Hamid, and a Mehrabad Airport official who was a friend of my cousin and there to help, saw the guy from the Intelligence Ministry. I was also in constant contact with Mohamad Ali Abtahi, Zahra Eshraghi, Solana Larsen, as well as James Corrick from the Canadian embassy in Tehran.

I met James at the Tehran embassy's main building in Abbas Abad and he kindly offered me a safe place to stay and take care of my Canadian passport.

Ultimately, if the cynics are so persistent on their claim that I'm making all this up, I'd encourage them to contact my mother so she explains why she was praying and crying when I got back from the interrogation session unharmed and why she hugged me and kissed me as if she had seen my revival from a sudden death.