Blogs bridge Iran-US gulf

Despite canceled trip, connections growing

Fariba Pajooh, an Iranian blogger, hoped to cover the US election.

TEHRAN - US officials took it as a quiet sign of good will: In October, the Iranian government gave permission to Iranian bloggers to travel to the United States to write about its presidential election. But minutes before the bloggers boarded the plane in Tehran, Iranian security officials reversed the decision, confiscating the bloggers' passports.

"It was like a dream," said Fariba Pajooh, a 28-year-old blogger who was slated to spend three weeks visiting American colleges and newspapers, including Harvard University and the Providence Journal.

The abruptly aborted trip illustrates an ongoing power struggle within the Iranian government over how to relate to the United States on the eve of a new - and perhaps more receptive - admin istration. One faction favors increased dialogue and exchanges with Americans, while another, apparently more powerful, group opposes such contact.

But the canceled blogger trip also illustrates the significant role that the Internet is already playing in boosting communication between Iran and the United States, even as the two governments remain embroiled in internal debates about whether or not to reestablish relations.

Three decades after the United States cut off diplomatic ties with Iran, blogs and e-mail have become crucial conduits for communication between the countries - and for often-lively debates among officials of both countries and average citizens.

"The Internet is our most significant ally," Goli Ameri, assistant secretary of state for Educational and Cultural Affairs, told Congress earlier this year in highlighting efforts to reach out to average Iranians.

With an estimated 60,000 active Farsi-speaking blogs, Iran has one of the most vibrant blogospheres in the world, outstripping the rest of the Middle East. In 2006 and 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a blog to address the American people, even as the Bush administration shunned him and American news outlets portrayed him as dangerous and unstable.

"Noble Americans," he wrote in 2006, "I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure" in Iraq.

Some Americans responded with sharp retorts, according to the blog. "You're one of the most stupid presidents ever!" one writer - identified as an American named Nicholas - apparently wrote. "I'm sure about half of the comments posted on this blog are just totally fake and used as propaganda."

Last year, the US State Department also began to use the blogosphere to engage the Iranian people, setting up a Farsi-speaking team to debate Iranian government officials on their blogs. There, representatives of the two governments argued over topics including Iran's nuclear program.

While prohibited from contacting Iranian officials in any formal way, US officials seemed to relish their lengthy encounters on the Net, including one this summer with Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad's media adviser.

Javanfekr had written that "the smart policies of Iranian government have strengthened the foundations of Iran's economy . . . which Iran's enemies don't have the ability nor the intellect to understand."

"If by strengthening Iran's economic foundations you mean having double-digit unemployment rates, very high inflation, and the rationing of energy supplies then you are correct in saying it is hard for us to see and understand," the US team responded, according to a transcript that was verified by the State Department.

Outside the realm of officialdom, many ordinary Iranians and Americans have their own stories of friendlier connections through chat rooms and on social-networking sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Farhad Ghorbani, a 24-year-old journalist with IRPANA, the student arm of a state-owned news agency, searched the Internet for someone who could help him obtain a mold for shaping wood to make a violin. When he found such a person in the United States, his teacher helped him write a message in English. The American wrote back, and - despite the US embargo on sending goods to Iran - sent Ghorbani the mold.

"People are relating to the Americans on the computer," he said. "We can chat. Regardless of the political views and what the politicians do, we want to have this kind of cultural relationship with the United States."

Seeking to capitalize on such sentiments, the Bush administration recently decided to open a diplomatic office in Tehran to process visas, the first official US presence in Tehran since 1979. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that the administration ran out of time to open the office, and would now leave the decision about opening it to the Obama administration.

Iranian officials, for their part, are deeply divided over whether to welcome such a move, with many arguing that a US diplomatic presence would be meddlesome and could cause embarrassing long lines for visas. But some have pushed for greater engagement.

Thus, when the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a nongovernmental organization with offices in London and Washington, D.C., sought permission to set up a Tehran office to launch a website featuring Iranian bloggers, Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance agreed.

And when the institute proposed bringing a group of bloggers to America to cover the presidential election, which drew enormous interest in Iran, the culture ministry sought to make it happen, vetoing just two of the bloggers. Iranian officials studied the group's hour-by-hour schedule and canceled some of the proposed events, including meetings with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and actor Sean Penn, who has visited Tehran and called for greater understanding between the two countries.

The US State Department agreed to facilitate the trip, giving the bloggers visas within two weeks, while refusing just one of the proposed participants.

At 4 a.m. on Oct. 15, 10 bloggers arrived at the airport in Tehran ready for the trip to New York. But just before they boarded the plane, a security official arrived, asked them to step aside, and seized their luggage.

No explanation was given, Pajooh said. In the weeks that followed, at least seven of the 10 bloggers were interrogated for hours by Iranian security officials. Their passports still have not been returned, Pajooh said.

She added that her interrogators scorned them by saying - falsely - that Rice and Republican presidential contender John McCain planned to greet the group upon their arrival in the United States.

After the interrogation, Pajooh blogged about her experience, getting 2,500 hits in three days, compared to the 70 or 80 she normally receives.

Iran's minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Mohammad Reza Saffar-Harandi, declined to specify why the trip was canceled.