My Iran-Israel Peace Project and Its Enemies: Nikahang "Nik" Kowsar et al

After my last year visit to Israel, a few individuals started to run an ugly and personal smear campaign against me. This includes some Iranians and their friends in Canada and Israel.

I always had the suspicion that given my clear and eclectic political positions, the only way for the Iranian intelligence service to discredit what I’ve started both in terms of blogging movement and also the Iran-Israel friendship project, would be something very cheap and very personal.

They started with spreading rumors that I’m either gay or bisexual, that I’ve been terribly unfaithful to my ex-wife, that I steal money from my friends, that I work for the Islamic Republic and they pay for my travels, that I’ve lied about being googled at the US border and banned from entering, that I’ve lied about being detained and questioned and forced to sign apology during my last visit in Iran in Summer 2005, etc.

Before my recent visit to Israel, one of these former-friends, for example, had started calling various security and academic contacts in Israel to stop me from entering Israel for the second time and speak at Ben Gurion University. On the basis that she knows through her Iranian friends that I work for the Islamic Republic.

A mix of jealousy, sexual tension, rivalry, and repressions have connected these former-friends to do something that people who’ve blocked my website for almost two years now and detained and harassed me last time in Iran wish to do. They’re being used by them to damage my credibility.

Another former-friend, Nikahang Kowsar, has gone as far to write for a disgraceful neo-conservative news website that pushes for military action against Iran to bring a monarchist government headed by Reza Pahlavi. (An older article published by the same website calling for my arrest) A long piece on how and why he thinks I work for the Islamic Republic, based on my writings, biography and history.

But few know these facts about Mr. Kowsar, the writer of that article:

• He is a devotee Muslim who prays, fast and doesn’t drink – while everyone knows I 'm an alcohol-drinking, pork-eating, joint-smoking person who has zero belief in religion and whatever comes with it.

• He Has posted numerous entries exposing and attacking a well-known Iranian female journalist’s over her liberal sex life and the real reasons behind her career success, accusing her and some other female journalists to sleep with their bosses to get promoted.

• He has never drawn a single cartoon of or written a critical sentence about Ayatollah Khamenei in his whole career, even now that he lives in Toronto, while he has made a fame for attacking reformist president Khatami and the entire reformist movement. While the first reason I was detained and harassed last year, according to the intelligence office who questioned me, was the criticism and the language I was using to talk about Khamenei. I’ve written numerous posts with harsh criticism and even attacks about him, while I’ve also been shameless in defending the Islamic Republic as a cause worth defending.

• He has got permission from Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ahmadinejad’s mentor, before leaving Iran and demanding for refugee status based on charges of insulting the same Ayatollah in a cartoon about 8 years ago.

• He's repeatedly bullied and attacked some common Iranian homosexual friends in his blog and in some has threatened them to public ally expose them to their parents and family and friends.

• His blog, with enough visibility to be noticed by the intelligence service, has never been filtered or blocked by the Iranian government. Whereas every single website I run (my two blogs, photoblog, and a MetaFilter-style community blog called Sobhaneh) has been filtered for almost two years now.

Now after my second successful trip to Israel, I’m sure you would soon hear more rumors like what I mentioned earlier. Be prepared. The Iranian intelligence service is very good in using this kind of methods to discredit people it doesn’t like or trust.