Iran Reportedly Shutters Leading Reform Papers

In an apparent head-on assault on the newspapers that have been leading the call for reform and increased democracy in Iran, the judiciary there Sunday reportedly ordered the closure of at least 12 publications and the arrest of a newspaper publisher who has been a thorn in the side of the regime.

With growing boldness in recent days, a hard-line court has been going after reformist journalists and publications, encouraged by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who last week said that 10 or 15 newspapers in Iran were functioning as “bases of the enemy.”

The state news agency IRNA reported today that the ban covered eight major dailies, three weeklies and one monthly. According to the agency, they had all ignored prior warnings to cease printing material that “disparaged Islam and the religious elements of the Islamic Revolution.”

The closures, along with the arrests of two high-profile reform journalists on Saturday and Sunday, amounted to a stunning reversal for the reformers aligned with President Mohammed Khatami. The actions suggested that the conservatives hope to snuff out the climate of increased freedom of speech and swing back the pendulum on the program of liberalizations that began with Khatami’s 1997 election as president.

A judiciary communique said that the closed publications were acting against the Islamic state created in the country’s 1979 revolution--”part of the cultural assault of the foreign enemies of Iran.” It also charged that foreign agents had “infiltrated” the ranks of Iranian journalists.

The shutdown order affected some of the country’s most popular newspapers, including the reform dailies Fath, Asr-e Azadegan, Aftab-e Emrooz and Arya, plus the monthly Iran-e Farda.

Also on Sunday, judicial authorities imprisoned Latif Safari, director of the banned daily Neshat. His arrest came one day after the seizure of Akbar Ganji, Iran’s top investigative journalist.

Ganji, who worked for several newspapers, had attained almost a cult status in Iran for his disclosures about a shadowy clique within the Intelligence Ministry. He blamed the clique for the killing of five dissidents in Iran in late 1998 and the deaths of scores of other regime opponents in previous years.

After an assassination attempt on the life of a key Khatami advisor one month ago, and attempts by the conservative Guardians Council to overturn various parliamentary election results favorable to reformers, Khatami and his allies are now seen by many as under siege in the intensifying power struggle between reformers and conservatives.

On the evidence of the parliamentary vote in February, reformers aligned with Khatami can count on the support of most ordinary Iranians. However, hard-liners control most key strategic institutions in Iran, including the police, the army, the intelligence service, the judiciary and state television, which could help them maintain a grip on power no matter what the public wants.

What is unclear is whether the hard-liners’ recent moves mean the conservatives are merely hoping to bolster their position and weaken their opponents before the seating at the end of next month of the new parliament, which, according to unofficial results, should have a 70% majority of reformers.

Or do the conservatives now see themselves as being in a fight to the finish, in which they might dare to resort to extreme measures to provoke a domestic crisis and perhaps even stop the new parliament from convening?

Last weekend, the head of the basij, the militia of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards, warned that they would deal “blows in the skull” of reformist leaders and writers trying to promote “American-style reform” in Iran. Meanwhile, state television has been mounting a campaign against reformers who attended a conference this month in Germany about Iranian political developments. Participants are being accused of disloyalty to Islamic values and the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Also worrying to reformers is that even though the new parliament is due to be seated May 28, the Guardians Council--a watchdog dominated by conservatives, whose duties include ratifying legislation and overseeing elections--has so far not set a date for a runoff for the 65 seats in the 490-member body whose occupants are still to be determined.

In addition, the council has said there is a need for a recount of the parliamentary voting results in Tehran, the capital, where, according to preliminary results, 29 of the 30 parliamentary seats contested in February went to reformers.

Among reformers, there has been a sense of frustration at the recent turn of events. Khatami himself, in a speech Saturday, said that his government should not be exposed to constant crises.

And before being driven off to his cell in Tehran’s Evin Prison on Sunday, Safari managed to hand off a letter to colleagues in which he accused hard-line opponents of reform of hiding behind illegal court proceedings.

“I choose to go to prison and serve an illegal sentence in order to unmask those who incessantly break the law,” he wrote, according to news service reports. He added that he hoped that “the true face of the court and its judge, where verdicts are decided in advance, will be denounced.”

Safari had been the publisher of Neshat, one of the most popular reform newspapers. According to his son, he is supposed to serve a 27-month sentence related to the newspaper’s coverage of an anti-hard-line student riot in July.

In addition to Safari and Ganji, the former editor in chief of Neshat, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, was put in prison two weeks ago today, bringing to three the number of senior journalists jailed in April alone.

In March, Saeed Hajjarian, another leading journalist who was both a Tehran City Council member and a close friend of and advisor to Khatami, was shot in the face and gravely wounded outside his office, in an attack also widely believed to be the work of hard-liners. Although Hajjarian’s wound is not considered life-threatening and he has apparently escaped paralysis, he remains hospitalized with a bullet lodged near his spine.

Besides the arrests and closures, independent journalists are facing a legislative threat. The outgoing parliament, dominated by conservatives, passed a law Tuesday making it more difficult for banned newspapers to reopen under other names, a prime strategy used in the past.

Some Iranian observers think the recent boldness of the conservatives can be traced to Khamenei.

During February’s election campaign, the religious leader maintained a more or less neutral stance in the war between reformers and hard-liners. But recently he seems to have shifted more openly to the conservative side. A tough speech by Khamenei on Thursday was interrupted by chants of “Death to the mercenary writers!” and “Shame on you, [press] hypocrites!”