When nearly 70 percent of Iranian voters elected moderate President Mohammad Khatami last year, he promised that his administration would grant Iranians greater civil liberties. Newspapers appeared to be the beneficiaries of this new openness, with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance granting many more licenses to print. Yet such permission can also be revoked if a newspaper prints something that the courts deem defamatory or subversive. And those courts are dominated by conservatives.

So instead of Khatami's election being a clear-cut victory for free speech, newspapers in the Islamic republic have become casualties in a tug of war between conservatives and moderates. Against this backdrop, it was no surprise when two daily newspapers, one of which had a reputation of being the most daring newspaper in Tehran, were recently shut down.

Jameah (Society), was ordered to stop printing June 11, the eighty-eighth day of the paper's life, but the editors continued to print while the newspaper appealed the decision. That appeal was turned down July 22, when the General Court of Tehran forced the newspaper to close permanently. The court also fined the newspaper 16 million rials (about $4,000) and suspended publisher Hamid-Reza Jalai-Pour from publishing a newspaper for one year.

In less than four months, Jameah had gained the reputation of being Iran's most liberal newspaper. It published stories no other newspaper had dared print, says Elahe Hicks, an Iranian researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. One example: a lengthy interview with a former Iranian deputy prime minister who had been imprisoned for sixteen years after he was convicted of being a spy for the United States. In another story, Jameah had quoted the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, as saying that the government should "cut the necks and tongues" of its opponents. That was enough for a judge to shut the paper down.

After Gozarech-e Rouz (Daily Report) published an article alleging that members of the clergy were transferring money abroad, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a misconduct warning to the paper. This warning prevents director Mohammet Mahdavi Khorrami from owning or heading any publication for three years. Khorrami was also fined 12 million rials (about $3,000). Because of the warning, Hicks says, Khorrami felt that he had no choice but to close his newspaper. He was grateful not to be imprisoned.

But there is reason for hope. July 25, three days after the court closed Jameah, the newspaper's entire staff and the editor Mashaalah Shams-Ol-Vaezin started a new newspaper, called Tous.

A court shut the paper down for a few hours, then allowed it to reopen provided the paper replace its staff and editor; the staff then started another paper, Aftab-e Emrooz (Today's Sun). That there is great controversy about newspapers in Iran is not only obvious from government actions, but from those of the general populace as well. The day Tous was closed a mob attacked the paper and beat Shams-Ol-Vaezin.

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