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Red Lines and Deadlines
Handbook: Politics and the Press in Iran
by Afshin Marashi
Press and politics in Iran have been intertwined from the very beginning of the country's experiment with modernity. Newspapers and periodicals have served as important forums for Iranians to discuss fundamental questions of social, cultural, and political change. These debates and their historical consequences -- including war, famine, foreign invasion, cultural change, and social and political revolution -- have all been reflected in the pages of Iranian newspapers, magazines, and journals. As these debates have unfolded over the past two centuries, one thing has remained consistent: the relationship between the state and the press has been one of mutual antagonism, with the press, periodical literature, and other media acting as the voice of criticism and dissent within Iranian society, while the state -- whatever its ideological character -- has continued its efforts to censor and control those dissenting voices.
Part I: The Early Years
By the early nineteenth century Iranian reformers had become keenly sensitive to what they perceived as the relative weakness of their society in comparison to the growing threats from Imperial Russia to the north and the British Raj in the south. In order to transform Iranian society, reformers in the Qajar government sent students to Europe in order to study the new scientific and technological developments that were seen as the secrets of European strength.
Among the first of these students to travel abroad was Mirza Saleh Shirazi, who was sent to Britain in 1815. Shirazi's stay in Britain impressed upon him the important role of newspapers in a modern society, and Shirazi brought back to Iran the technology to establish the first Persian-language newspaper. This first paper, the "Khaqaz-e Akhbar" (literally News-Paper), was short-lived, but was the first in a long series of periodicals designed to represent the government's official point of view on matters of politics and policy. Its successor, the "Vaqaye'-e Ettefaqiyeh" (The Chronicle of Events), began publishing in 1851, and was much more successful in the long term as an official organ of the state.
At the same time that the state was working to establish an official press, dissident and radical groups in Iranian society were beginning to recognize the usefulness of the new technology of print to disseminate ideas and shape public opinion. Significantly, this early Persian-language radical press was almost invariably published outside of Iran. London, Calcutta, Cairo, Istanbul, and Baku, were all important cities with sizable communities of Iranian expatriates, and during the second half of the nineteenth century these expatriate communities became the home for an emerging radical Persian-language press. Newspapers such as "Akhtar" (the Star), published in Istanbul, "Hikmat" (Wisdom), published in Cairo, "Irshad" (Guidance), published in Baku, "Qanun" (Law), published in London, and "Habl al-Matin" (The Strong Bond), published in Calcutta became the instruments through which Iranians first challenged the authority of the monarchy, as well as forums for proposing dramatic social, cultural, and political changes for Iranian society.
It was through these newspapers that a new vocabulary entered into Iranian political language. Concepts and words such as liberalism, secularism, nationalism, and constitutionalism, all entered into Iranian political consciousness during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Iranians read these publications -- which were officially banned -- in coffeehouses, mosques, bookstores, and bazaars. Only official and semiofficial papers were allowed to be distributed, and then only through the efforts of an underground network of smugglers and printers. This underground movement managed to defy the ban on the radical press by importing what texts they could and reprinting important works of criticism published abroad, thereby ensuring that radical journalism remained available in spite of government censorship.
The government's fears were not unfounded: the writings of the dissenting expatriate community did have an impact on Iranian politics, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the coffeehouse discussions and reading groups had become full-fledged revolutionary societies. Growing radical sentiment led to a period of political upheaval, and eventually to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, which forced the government into establishing a representative assembly (the majles) and adopting a written constitution.
Revolutionary sentiment was not solely the creation of the progressive, Western-influenced underground press. Foreshadowing the coalition of disparate parties who would participate in the 1979 revolution, secular progressives, radicals, financial and political powerbrokers and the Islamic "ulama" (clergy) collaborated against the Qajar shah. These groups found their own way around the publications ban: the clerics preached an antigovernment message, reaching an audience that had no access to the underground press or contraband smuggled papers, while the revolutionary societies clandestinely distributed antigovernment pamphlets, the "shabnamehs" or night letters.
Together, these groups were able to reach a constituency broad enough to pressure the government into adopting the proposed assembly. The hoped-for period of parliamentary rule, however, never arrived, collapsing under British and Russian pressure, reconsolidation by the Qajar dynasty, and the arrival of the First World War. The constitutional movement did lead to a period of press freedom: the ban on nonofficial periodicals was lifted, and an explosion of publishing -- with the new papers willing and able to present political commentary -- followed the establishment of the first majles.
The Constitutional Revolution was in many ways the political expression of Iran's debate, begun in the first half of the nineteenth century, on how to reform itself. That debate had led to the importation of the technology of the modern press in the first place, and the radical press that emerged played a crucial role first in establishing the direction of that evolving debate, and eventually in determining the outcome of Iran's first twentieth-century revolution. Ideas first voiced in banned newspapers in the late nineteenth century became the basis for a popular movement that demanded a new legal and constitutional framework meant to limit the authority of the Iranian monarchy.
Part II: Press Under the Pahlavis
Following the long period of social and political stagnation of the nineteenth century, and the limited success of the forestalled constitutional movement of 1905-1911, the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979) was a transformative period in modern Iranian history. Taking advantage of the confusion of the post-WWI period (which was marked by economic crisis and British, Russian, and U.S. maneuvering over control of Iran's oil supply) Reza Shah Pahlavi, an officer in Iran's Russian-trained Cossack Brigade staged a military coup in 1921, abolished the ruling Qajar dynasty, and in 1925 declared himself the first shah of the new Pahlavi dynasty, after which he led Iran into an era of centralization, nation-building, and modernization from above. The majles continued to convene, but the parliament's power was subordinate to the centralized authority of the shah.
The reforms initiated under Reza Shah had profound implications for all areas of Iranian society, not least of which was the press and publishing industry. Emulating Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's nation-building efforts in the neighboring Republic of Turkey, Reza Shah seized upon the press and the publishing industry as a prime instrument for the dissemination of a new state-centered ideology of modernization. The Shah reined in the freedoms of the constitutional period, and obtaining a publishing license became a prerequisite for the establishment of a newspaper. Publishers lucky enough to obtain newspaper licenses were strictly observed, controlled, and often censored when they published anything critical of the state.
As a consequence, the number of newspapers in circulation declined between 1925 and 1941. The Tehran daily Ettela'at (Information) began publishing under the editorship of Abbas Masudi in 1925, and quickly become the most widely circulating newspaper in Iran, as well as becoming the semi-official voice of the government. Other forms of press control were also initiated. Fearing the spread of socialist ideas from the north and the threat of ethno-nationalist movements from within, the 1931 Press Law made it a crime to publish materials that were deemed unpatriotic or which advocated secession. In 1939 the new Ministry of Public Enlightenment was established with a mission to spread nationalist sentiment. The new ministry employed teams of writers who produced articles on ideologically approved topics, which were then channeled into newspapers and other periodicals throughout the country.
Official control of the media partially broke down between 1941 and 1953. Under pressure from the Allied powers during WWII, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his young son Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, handing over power on September 16, 1941. The ensuing twelve years, between 1941 and 1953, proved to be a period of experimentation with democracy in Iranian society, much like the Constitutional Period of 1905-1911.
Unlike his authoritarian father, the new shah was weak, inexperienced, and had yet to consolidate his rule. During the ensuing period of political weakness on the part of the central government, the business of governing returned to the majles, following the laws established during the constitutional period, which had remained on the books, and the media enjoyed a degree of openness and freedom that had been missing since Reza Shah took power. An avalanche of newspapers and printed materials expressing a stunning range of political points of view -- from the pan-Iranist rightwing press to the official publications of the Iranian Communist Party -- was published between 1941 and 1953.
In the context of this newfound freedom to organize and associate, political parties and other types of associations came to coalesce around particular newspapers, which in turn became the mouthpieces of particular social, cultural, and political points of view. The weak central government continued to try to censor and control the press, as did the Allied Occupation Forces (1941-1946), who closely monitored the press and reserved the right to suppress papers that published materials deemed derogatory to the interests of the occupation forces. Despite these official restrictions, however, by the late 1940s the Iranian press was deeply involved in a vigorous and often freewheeling public debate on the direction of Iranian politics.
The political consequence of this period of relative democratic openness was the rise of Muhammad Mosaddeq to political prominence. As a longtime member of the majles, and Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953, Mossadeq brought the oil issue to public prominence by sponsoring a bill in 1951 to nationalize the British controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The oil nationalization movement of 1951-1953 was made possible by the overwhelming public attention brought to the issue via discussions in the media. Mossadeq's use of the print media -- and the new medium of radio -- was crucial in mobilizing popular support for the nationalization movement. The end of this crucial episode in modern Iranian history came with the overthrow of Mossadeq in August of 1953. Citing the growing threat of a communist takeover, the United States and Great Britain organized a clandestine operation code-named "Operation Ajax" to precipitate a military coup in Iran which would overthrow Mossadeq and bring Muhammad Reza Shah back to power.
The end of the Mossadeq era also meant the end of the era of relative openness in the media. After the overthrow of Mossadeq, Iran entered another period of protracted authoritarianism and state control of the media. During this period of royal dictatorship, between 1953 and 1978, political parties were outlawed, criticism of the monarchy was punished, and strict controls were placed on the content of newspapers, other printed materials, and the emerging mass media of radio, television, and film. The Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Culture became the main institutions controlling the content of such media, with enforcement in the hands of the much-feared Iranian secret police (SAVAK). As a consequence, throughout the 1950s and 1960s the number of Iranian newspapers once again declined as the reading public became skeptical of state-controlled content. The type of official content that came to permeate the press and other forms of media during this period included a steady stream of royalist and nationalist ideology, along with extensive coverage of official court ceremonies (salaams), the coronation of the Shah in 1967, and elaborate staged media spectacles such as the 2,500 year anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire, held to great official fanfare and media coverage in October of 1971.
Part III: The Revolution and After
From the mid 1970s onward, the authoritarian Pahlavi regime began to show signs of weakness. Facing increasing pressure from human rights organizations such as P.E.N. International, Amnesty International, and the International Commission of Jurists, as well as the new administration of Jimmy Carter, the Shah began to relax some longstanding restrictions on freedoms of expression and association. A selected number of political prisoners were released, political parties gradually began to organize once again, and the press began to take chances on what it would publish. In the summer of 1977 a series of "open letters to the Shah" were published in a number of important Iranian dailies. These open letters, criticizing the lack of political freedom in Iran, were signed by leading intellectuals, prominent lawyers, and political veterans of the Mosaddeq era. After almost twenty-five years of official control of the media the publication of these open letters represented a major test of the Shah's overtures towards liberalization.
Even more important than the open letters published by the secular-liberal wing of the opposition was the flurry of printed materials and other forms of media that began to circulate from the religious opposition. The secular and religious opposition movements had maintained an uneasy collaborative relationship since the constitutional period, but as early as 1965 the political opposition to the Shah had begun to take on increasingly religious characteristics overall.
Exiled from Iran for his public denunciations of the Shah's policies in the early 1960s the Ayatollah Khomeini increasingly became the figurehead of this religious opposition. With the new liberalization that took place beginning in 1977, Khomeini's supporters began to publicize his political pronouncements. From official exile -- first in Najaf, Iraq and then in Paris -- Khomeini, with the help of a large network of revolutionary students both within and outside of Iran, began to circulate his sermons on audiocassette. These audiocassettes, calling for the overthrow of the monarchy, became the main form of revolutionary communication between the revolutionary religious leadership outside of Iran and the growing religious opposition movement inside the country. From the late fall of 1977 to the final overthrow of the monarchy on February 11th, 1979, it was the underground media -- the galvanizing force of sermons delivered via audiocassette, along with hand-pressed leaflets, impromptu revolutionary communiquŽs, the ad-hoc alternative press, and radical graffiti written on the walls of the major cities -- that became the basis of the mass movement that overthrew the monarchy. Once again, as had been the case during the Constitutional period, the media (in both official and underground forms) came to play a central role in building popular support for radical change in Iranian political life.
In the years since the revolution, moments of free expression and a liberalized popular press have alternated with periods of state-imposed control, censorship, and even the shuttering of publications and the imprisonment of journalists -- maintaining the dynamic between press and politicians that's characterized modern Iranian history.
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the conservative religious forces -- as part of their move to consolidate power to the exclusion of the secular liberal groups who'd participated in the revolution -- made a concerted effort to impose a new official line on the press and media. The former Ministry of Information, which had under the Shah been the main body controlling the press, was now renamed the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; its role remained essentially the same, however: to censor the media and enforce the ideological line of the government. Many of the major dailies were sold or expropriated by the revolutionary courts and turned into organs of the official Islamist position. The important newspapers Ettela'at and Kayhan were in this way turned into outlets for the political views of the revolutionary government. Radio and television were similarly subordinated to revolutionary ideology, with programming devoted to a concerted policy of Islamizing Iranian society.
It is against this backdrop that the current relationship between media and politics in Iranian society should be understood. With the election of President Muhammad Khatami in 1997, politics in Iran entered a new phase -- at least for the revolutionary period -- in which Iranians once again demanded democracy and basic freedoms. These periodic calls for democratic reform, including the demand for the freedom of the press, have been central to Iranian politics since the beginning of its modern history. What followed was a liberalization of the mainstream press, with the launch of hundreds of periodicals associated with the reform movement. These papers have maintained an uneasy truce with the clerical establishment, and have suffered a number of crackdowns. With the conservative reconsolidation of power following the 2004 parliamentary elections as well as the election of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the future of the reformist press is uncertain, but several high-profile papers -- like Shargh -- continue to publish.
There are other alternatives -- today's communication technology allows for an underground press that goes well beyond hand-pressed revolutionary newspapers smuggled in from abroad, or audiocassettes circulating clandestinely in the bazaars and mosques of the major cities. Today's democratic opposition movement has made extensive use of the Internet (with particular focus on an extensive network of bloggers) and satellite television, which flourishes despite an official ban on the possession of dishes. A new generation Iranian journalists producing newspapers and periodicals that are asking brave questions, challenging the authority of the state, and working once again to bring voices of dissent into the public sphere.
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the conservative religious forces -- as part of their move to consolidate power to the exclusion of the secular liberal groups who'd participated in the revolution -- made a concerted effort to impose a new official line on the press and media. The former Ministry of Information, which had under the Shah been the main body controlling the press, was now renamed the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; its role remained essentially the same, however: to censor the media and enforce the ideological line of the government. Many of the major dailies were sold or expropriated by the revolutionary courts and turned into organs of the official Islamist position. The important newspapers Ettela'at and Kayhan were in this way turned into outlets for the political views of the revolutionary government. Radio and television were similarly subordinated to revolutionary ideology, with programming devoted to a concerted policy of Islamizing Iranian society.
It is against this background that the current relationship between media and politics in Iranian society should be understood. With the election of President Muhammad Khatami in 1997, politics in Iran entered a new phase -- at least for the revolutionary period -- in which Iranians once again demanded democracy and basic freedoms. These periodic calls for democratic reform, including the demand for the freedom of the press, have been central to Iranian politics since the beginning of its modern history. What followed was a liberalization of the mainstream press, with the launch of hundreds of periodicals associated with the reform movement. These papers have maintained an uneasy truce with the clerical establishment, and have suffered a number of crackdowns. With the conservative reconsolidation of power following the 2004 elections [as well as the election of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005], the future of the reformist press is uncertain, but several high-profile papers -- like Shargh -- continue to publish.
There are other alternatives -- today's communication technology allows for an underground press that goes well beyond hand-pressed revolutionary newspapers smuggled in from abroad, or audiocassettes circulating clandestinely in the bazaars and mosques of the major cities. Today's democratic opposition movement has made extensive use of the Internet (with particular focus on an extensive network of bloggers) and satellite television, which flourishes despite an official ban on the possession of dishes. A new generation of Iranian journalists are producing newspapers and periodicals that are asking brave questions, challenging the authority of the state, and working once again to bring voices of dissent into the public sphere.
Afshin Marashi is an assistant professor in the Department of History at California State University, Sacramento
Sources: Peter Avery, "Printing, The Press, and Literature in Modern Iran", in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly, and Charles Melville eds., THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF IRAN, VOL. 7, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 815-869; Edward G. Browne, PRESS AND POETRY IN MODERN PERSIA, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914); L.P. Elwell-Sutton, "The Iranian Press, 1941-1947", in IRAN: JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PERSIAN STUDIES 8 (1968), pp. 65-104; Hamid Mowlana, "Journalism in Iran: A History and Interpretation". Unpublished PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1963; Mohammad Sadr-Hashemi, TARIKH-E JARAYED VA MAJALAT-E IRAN (A HISTORY OF NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES IN IRAN), 4 vols. (Isfahan, 1948); Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi, SMALL MEDIA, BIG REVOLUTION: COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); "Pushing the Limits: Iran's Islamic Revolution at Twenty", MIDDLE EAST REPORT, NO. 212, Fall 1999.
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