Iranian newspaper closed again

The liberal daily Hammihan, reopened recently after a seven-year absence, was shut down again Tuesday after Iran’s hard-line judiciary said the paper’s director had failed to sign documents in a court proceeding.

An official of the newspaper said the legal technicality was an excuse to silence a voice critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ruling circle.

“I think the rapid growth of Hammihan readership and its increasing impact on public opinion and its professionalism ... made the paper the victim of a shutdown,” said Mohammed Atrianfar, the chief of the paper’s editorial board and a reformist political figure.

Meanwhile, the director of the Iranian Labor News Agency, the only news service that regularly covers the activities of nonprofit groups and unions, issued his resignation amid rumors that his organization might be shut down.

The pressure on the two news outlets comes at a time of sharpening divisions between Tehran and the Bush administration, which has said it is funding Iranian opposition to promote a change of Iran’s clerical regime. The Ahmadinejad government has appeared particularly sensitive to criticism of its policies, which have placed Iran in confrontation with the West over the country’s pursuit of nuclear technology.

Analysts and Western diplomats in Tehran say Ahmadinejad, who faces growing discontent over his economic policies, fears that moderate and reformist factions in Iran’s political system will unite against him in 2008 parliamentary elections and boot him from office in 2009.

Hammihan was launched early in 2000 by former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi. He had been jailed after a falling-out with other Iranian political factions. His newspaper was shut down in mid-2000 after calling for closer relations with the United States. It also had printed flags of Iran and the U.S. next to each other to illustrate then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s apology for the U.S. role in overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953.

The newspaper reopened this May.

The judiciary said the paper was ordered closed Tuesday because Karbaschi had failed to sign a court document related to the reopening. Karbaschi said his attorney had signed it for him. Karbaschi is the secretary-general of a political party representing a faction opposed to Ahmadinejad.

Atrianfar called the reason for closing the paper this time “unprecedented.”

Massoud Heidari, the director of the Iranian Labor News Agency, said he was resigning but didn’t go into detail. The wire service was established four years ago during the final years of the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, a moderate.

In a letter published by the news agency, Heidari said he was resigning “in order to avoid further damage to ILNA.” The phrasing was interpreted by some as a strong hint that authorities had pressured him to quit or close shop.

“ILNA was the first nongovernmental news agency,” Heidari wrote. “It really defended civil institutions and disseminated information of civil society.”

daragahi@latimes.com

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Daragahi from Cairo.