Hussein Derakhshan [English site] is one of the leading voices of the Persian blogosphere. His blog [Persian site] manages to reach a wide audience in Iran despite being officially censored. Currently, he is fulfilling his dream of visiting Israel [Flickr pics] and breaking barriers in Israeli-Iranian relations. Lisa Goldman, his host in Israel writes about his visit in her blog, too. He is interviewed by the Israeli press in this Haaretz article. He has written "Democracy's Double Standard", an NYT op-ed piece, [bugmenot]. from Tel Aviv, and delivered a lecture on "Reform, Youth and Technology" at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Oh yeah, he's also a MeFite.
posted by ori on Jan 31, 2006 - 19 comments

Iranian vice-president's blog now has an English section
posted by hoder on Apr 6, 2004 - 7 comments

While there are a million blogs about cheese sandwiches and how lame fifth period trig class is, it's always great to hear when blogs actually help give a voice to those that never had one. Iranian women don't have much say in society, but thanks to blogs, they are now finding they have a voice as they're read by thousands around the world. Of course they've still got some net censorship in Iran, but this is a great start.
posted by mathowie on Feb 26, 2004 - 3 comments

Iranian vice-president is blogging. Mohammad Ali Abtahi is perhaps the only major politician who publishes his personal diary, and his secretly taken photos from official meetings (e.g. the ousted president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze) on his weblog, which is unfortunately only in Persian. (via iranFilter)
posted by hoder on Nov 24, 2003 - 9 comments

Bloggers unite to fight : Writers of web journals are joining forces to help free a blogger detained in Iran. At the same time, weblog are going to have much more political functions, especially in closed societies such as Iran. Their governments are begining to take notice.
posted by hoder on May 3, 2003 - 8 comments