Iranian Publishers Fear New Crackdown

Publisher Shahla Lahiji was at a book fair in western Iran when she noticed security people helping themselves to works that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had given her permission to publish.

“We didn’t even know who they were. When we asked, they answered, ‘Don’t challenge,’ ” she recalled. “This is a sensitive time for all of us.”

A climate of fear is running through editorial offices and publishing houses in Iran amid signs of a crackdown.

It began with criticism by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that some newspapers were being used to weaken Islamic belief. Then came the arrests of four staff members at the country’s most daring daily, Tous. Now Lahiji says that, one by one, she and others in the media have been warned: “Be careful.”

After more than a year of relative freedom under Iran’s moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, the hard-liners seem to have struck back.

Tous remains closed. Its business director, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, was released by authorities on Tuesday, but officials said he still faces investigation. The other three staff members remain in detention, their whereabouts and condition unknown. And before Jalaeipour’s release, a senior Islamic judge had warned that the four staff members could face the death penalty as mohareb, or “those who fight God.”

For editors and publishers, the message is clear: The winds have shifted. Khatami, the architect of the liberalized press climate since he took power last year, has not raised strong protest, leading many to conclude that he feels powerless to oppose the crackdown.

Others argue that the situation is not so dire.

Khatami’s administration has surrendered, they say, in the case of a few publications that challenged Iran’s system of government overseen by religious authority, but the trend toward more freedom remains intact.

“Originally press people felt, ‘This is it, there is going to be a crackdown’ and so on,” political scientist Sadeq Zibakalam said. “But it seems . . . there wasn’t any sort of organized and widespread crackdown. Since then, it has become somewhat relaxed.”

Although several newspapers have criticized the arrests of the Tous employees as a violation of the Iranian Constitution--a charge brushed aside by the hard-line judiciary--editors admit to feeling intimidated.

“Yes, I must be more cautious now because I could be faced by the Revolutionary Court,” said Ali Dehbashi, editor of Bukhara, a review of art and culture.

A veteran daily newspaper editor who requested anonymity said: “No one will come here to tell me to write this or not to write that. But if I write something, I know there will be a price to pay.”

For Iranians, the immediate effect is a press that is more cautious and less critical.

Some Khatami supporters feel that the crackdown is a sign of worse things to come, a signal that the hard-liners are working to depose the president.

“If we lose Khatami, then we have no alternative within the system,” warned Bedzah Nabavi, a leader of the pro-Khatami Moujahedeen of the Islamic Revolution Organization, in the Salam newspaper.

Started eight months ago as Jameah, Tous became Iran’s most popular paper, selling 400,000 copies a day. But within hours of Khamenei’s criticism of newspapers Sept. 15, Tous’ operations were suspended by the judiciary, along with those of two small weeklies. The ban became final Sept. 28 when the Press Supervisory Board revoked Tous’ license.

Tous got in trouble for an alleged insult that might not even seem insulting to outsiders. The newspaper reported on an interview given in France by former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who said the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had once sought political asylum in France.

Hard-liners deny that there was ever a request and considered it an insult to suggest that Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution who remains an icon nine years after his death, once asked such a favor of a Western power.

The Revolutionary Court, which prosecutes serious crimes under Islamic law, ordered the arrest of Jalaeipour, Tous Editor Mashaallah Shamsolwaizin and the other two staff members. They were charged with acting against national security. Other newspapers maintain that the action was illegal because it bypassed the watchdog Press Supervisory Board and an existing Press Court, which was created to consider cases involving journalistic errors and misdeeds.

But the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, said the judiciary’s Islamic punitive codes take precedence over the press law when issues of national security arise.

Tous had been fearless in testing the boundaries of freedom under Khatami.

In July, it reported that district mayors had been beaten by police during questioning connected with the trial of suspended Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi. In August, it revealed evidence that the judiciary had been taking bail money on deposit with the courts and investing it in interest-bearing bank accounts, with the profits going to judicial officials.

Yazdi, the judiciary head, said the Revolutionary Court intends to keep a close eye on the press, something that had been the purview of the more liberal Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. For Dehbashi, the art review editor, that is bad news.

“This court knows nothing about literature and culture,” he said. “It is not familiar with journalism.”

Another journalist, who requested anonymity, said conservatives acted because they are frightened by a society that seems to have turned against them.