While all of these are excellent and required reading, the last one, a blog by Iranian journalist Hossein Derakshan, is particularly outstanding. Derakshan, or "hoder" left Iran for Canada awhile ago during a regime crackdown on what's left of the free press. I found his blog through On the Face, which linked to an account of Derakshan's recent visit to Israel (do a search for "israel" on his site and read accounts of the whole trip--it's fascinating). He went because, growing up under the repressive regime in Iran, he was raised with the impression that Israel is pure evil. Knowing there had to be more to the story, Derakshan went to Israel (even though by doing so he knew he could never return to Iran under its current rulership), and discovered incredible similarities between the Jewish State and his home country.
For example, did you know that both President Moshe Katsav and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz are Iranian? Did you know that Israel contains the largest Iranian community outside of Iran itself? Pretty amazing.
Through Moaveni's book, I learned that our notions of a purely anti-Semitic, anti-American, war-mongering, fundamentalist Iran are fundamentally incorrect. As I learned from both Derakshan and Moaveni, there is an essential disconnect in thought, beliefs, and primary values between the government and the people. The Islamist reactionary government imposes compulsory practice on the nation, who for the most part despise the dress code, the degraded status of women (worth half as much as men, don't have legal rights to custody of their children, can be stoned for adultery, etc. etc.), the government's obsession with blocking out all glimpses of "Western culture", the harsh secret police, the nuclear program, and the virulent anti-Israelism.
In short, the actual citizenry of Iran has diametrically opposed values to the regime. Everything we associate with Iran, from the imprisonment of 12 Iranian Jews several years ago to President Almadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map"--is only reflective of a government ruled by dictatorial clerics, not the people themselves who have virtually no say. From reading books and blogs from people of all ages dealing with living in Iran, they seem very similar to anyone else--they want freedom from their oppressive government, they love the poetry of Rumi and Hafez (a love I share), they are devoted to what Iranian has stood for in the past (the founding of the first feminist groups back in the early 1900s, the democratic legendary leader Mossadegh, who was deposed by a US-backed coup in the fifties, a tragedy Iranians are still bitter about, their Persian ancient culture, etc.). And they're pissed, and are writing about it in the only free press still available to them--the Internet. Farsi is the fourth largest language of currently active blogs--an amazing statistic. Hoder has an enormous selection of Iranian blogs, which you need to weed through since most are in Persian.
A book that serves as a translated guide to the inside world of Iranians is Nasrin Alavi's We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs, in which the author, an Iranian now living in the UK, translates excerpts of blogs detailing the daily lives, struggles, hopes and dreams of Iranians living under the regime. The excerpts are grouped into historical categories that put them into context, giving the reader an illuminating picture of the facts on the ground.
Please check these out--you won't regret it.
