Iranian Newspaper Ordered Closed After Publishing Cartoon

Press authorities on Monday ordered the temporary closure of Shargh, Iran’s leading reformist newspaper, just days after the publication printed a cartoon that appeared to lampoon Iranian nuclear negotiations.

In a letter to the paper’s managing director, the Press Supervisory Board ordered the shutdown “for publishing articles insulting to religious, political and national figures, and fomenting discord.”

The board also cited the publication’s failure to comply with an earlier order to replace its managing editor, and about 70 previous warnings for violations of the press law in recent years.

Shargh, published by allies of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, is the most widely read newspaper critical of the government and is one of the few reformist publications operating as the government increasingly cracks down on dissent.

A second opposition publication, the political monthly Nameh, also has been closed in recent days, reportedly for publishing a poem by dissident female poet Simin Behbahani, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Monday.

The orders are the latest in what appears to be the beginning of a crackdown against reform-minded publications and journalists under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that also has resulted in the arrest of high-profile dissidents and the purging of dozens of liberal, secular professors from the nation’s universities.

Journalists over the last two months have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to four years for offenses that included “propaganda against the regime” and “insulting” Iran’s supreme religious leader.

“By its recent actions, the government is now trying to control the way the news is produced, distributed and received,” said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a spokesman for the Iranian Committee for the Defense of Freedom of the Press and editor of a number of reformist newspapers shut down by the judiciary.

The press board said it had warned the publishers of Shargh, which had been shut down for a week in February 2004 over similar charges, to appoint a new managing editor and halt its publication of material “insulting officials, religious and national figures.”

The most recent purported violation was the publication Thursday of a cartoon titled “The Other Rule for Playing the Game,” which depicted a horse and a donkey on a chessboard. A white halo appears around the donkey, an apparent reference to reports in several reformist papers that Ahmadinejad said he had been told that witnesses to his address at the United Nations last year had seen a halo of light around him. The president denied making the statement.

The board has referred the newspaper’s case to the courts for trial. Mehdi Rahmanian, the managing editor, has vowed to appeal the closure.

Recent actions by the government seem to point to new restrictions for the press. In August, the government spokesperson wrote a letter to the judiciary demanding action against those spreading “falsehoods” about the government. Last week, the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance published restrictions barring the use of most reformist websites as sources.