Derakhshan spoke at the Wikimania 2005 conference in Frankfurt, Germany regarding the complementary use of wikis and blogs to aid political reform and the growth of democracy in Iran and other countries.

A few days later he was interrogated by an intelligence official over the content of his blog and was forced to sign an apology before being allowed to leave Iran.

The Islamic Republic has long portrayed Israel as an evil state, with a consensual political agenda of killing every single man and woman who prays to Allah, including Iranians.

I'm going to tell them how any kind of violent action against Iran would only harm the young people who are gradually reforming the system and how the radicals would benefit from such situation.

His second visit was to participate in a conference at The Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva.

[21] His visits were widely covered by the local and international media, including Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, Ha'ir, Time Out Tel Aviv, Israeli Radio and its Persian service, Israel's English TV news, New York Times, BBC, etc.

: In August 2006, he published an article in the Columns & Blogs section of The Washington Post in which he supported Iran pursuing nuclear weapons as a deterrent to possible invasion by global powers, after normalising relations with the U.S. and Israel:[22] However, later after his prison sentence he supported Iran's nuclear deal with the six world powers.

[23] Derakhshan wrote in his blog in December 2006: "If the US attacked Iran, despite all my problems with the Islamic Republic, I'd go back and fight these bastards.

[25] In November 2007, Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at a hawkish think-tank called Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), filed a $2 million libel and defamation lawsuit[26] against Derakhshan, over one of his blog posts[27] in his Persian blog, in which he criticizes Khalaji for his service to the "enemies of his people and humanity", referring to the American hawkish policy makers on its board who were close to the George W. Bush administration and were closely involved in his interventionist middle east policy, including the occupation of Iraq, such as Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and James Woolsey.

"[6] On December 30, Alireza Jamshidi, the speaker of the Judicial system of Iran confirmed Derakhshan's arrest, but did not mention any Israel-related accusations.

[35] In October 2009, approaching the one-year anniversary of his arrest, his family began speaking out to Persian and English-language media, and Derakhshan's father Hassan sent an open letter to the new head of the Iranian Judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani asking for information about his son's detention.

The brother also said that at the dinner, Hossein confirmed human rights activists' reports[37] claiming Derakhshan had been subject to physical and psychological pressures such as being forced to do squats in cold showers, receiving repeated beatings, being subject to solitary confinedment, beatings, threats to arrest family members, and false promises of his release, in an effort to secure a confession to espionage charges.

[38] In March 2010, Derakhshan's mother, Ozra Kiarashpour, called on the head of Iran's judiciary to release her son, who had at that point been detained for 500 days without any official charge,[39] for the Iranian New Year, or Norouz.

[1][42] According to state-owned Mashregh News, which is close to Iran's presidential office, Derakhshan was convicted on charges of cooperation with hostile countries (a reference to the Israel visit), spreading propaganda against the ruling establishment, promotion of counterrevolutionary groups and insulting Islamic thought and religious figures.

[70][71] He has co-authored a report on "fake news" and disinformation with Claire Wardle, titled "Information Disorder" (2017)[72] which was commissionned by Council of Europe, in which he notably coined the term "malinformation".

The election broke records of the lowest turnout in Iranian electoral history and concluded with the victory of Ebrahim Raisi.