Iran Feature: Supreme Leader Says "Read"...As Books are Banned and Publishers are Closed

On Wednesday, the Supreme Leader said, "Iranian officials should encourage the youth to read useful books....Reading should become an everyday habit among all Iranians, and the youth in particular." Pointing to Iran's long history of publishing books, he expressed disappointment at the current figures of book publication and reading. 

A quick look at how the Islamic Republic has encouraged reading in recent years....

November 2006: The regime bans thousands of books, including acclaimed works from homegrown novelist Sadegh Hedayat, classics like William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and best-sellers like The Da Vinci Code. Minister of Culture Mohammad Hossein calls publishers "assistants for evil" and says they should stop serving a "poisoned dish to the young generation."

January 2011: A think tank close to Iranian security forces publishes a leaflet listing publishers, writers, and translators who are “usurpers” intent on overthrowing the regime.  The publishers  include Cheshmeh, Ghoghnous, Akhtaran, and Kavir. Among the writers listed are Emaduddin Baghi, Ramin Jahanbegloo, and poet Simin Behbahani.

The work of novelist Paulo Coelho is banned.

Mehr reports on the closing of businesses along Tehran's Karim Khan Avenue, renowned for its bookstores.

The head of the Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, tells an audience of the dangers for Iran's students of "Western" texts in the humanities and social sciences.

May 2011: Works by leading novelist Ali Ashraf Darvishian and several other writers are ordered off the shelves at the Tehran International Book Fair.

The books which are removed include An Introduction to Heidegger's Existential Philosophy; The Nik-Akhtar Family, a novel by distinguished Iranian satirist Iraj Pezeshkzad; the third volume of The Cambridge History of Iran; and a book about yoga.

July 2011: Six printing houses close because of economic problems, including a shortage of orders and the rise of imported products.

Writer Mostafa Rahmandust notes only one book for each two Iranian children is published annually, "A writer is not able to earn a living, nor is a publisher hopeful about the outcomes of his/her work....Cultural officials have not carried out their duties properly in the field of children's literature."

But there is one positive development in the Iranian book world, with the appearance of a new work titled "Leading Approaches". The subject? A collection of the speeches and statements of an Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Latest from Iran (23 July): A Furlough in Repression

1840 GMT: The Slain Scientist --- Confusion Alert. We have been working throughout the day on the initial report that the scientist slain today in Tehran was a 35-year-old "Professor of Physics" named Dariush Rezaei, as initially reported by Iranian media (see 1503 and 1530 GMT).

This led us to Dariush Rezaei, also identified as Dariush Rezaei-Ochbolagh, a faculty member at Mohaghegh Ardabili University (see 1600 GMT). However, there is a curiosity in Rezaei's profile --- he is listed as 46 years old.

(Mehr, however, do seem to have a consistent story, with Rezaei a 45-year-old professor at the University, which is in the city of Ardebil in northwest Iran.)

Now Fars and IRNA that the victim, named Dariush Rezaeinejad, is actually a postgraduate student in electrical engineering at Khaje Nasir University in Tehran. IRNA, from an "informed source", says Rezaeinejad was "cooperating with a number of universities and scientific centers".

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Iran Analysis: Supreme Leader = Machiavelli? (Sadjadpour)

Khamenei's inflexibility has so far served him well. His unwillingness to bend, however, has made it more likely that the Islamic Republic itself will have to break. As a young advisor to opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi recently told me, "We don't want a revolution; we've seen how it turns the country upside down. But they're giving us no other choice."

Machiavelli died in 1527, distrusted by all sides and disliked by the people he aimed to serve. It would be poetic justice if one of his most practiced disciples suffered the same fate.

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Iran Snapshot: The Supreme Leader's Economic Plan (Ghajar)

Ayatollah Khamenei at an Oil PlantOn July 19, Iran’s highest authority, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, published a “General Employment Policy” consisting of 13 goals or strategies to improve employment in Iran. The plan was an indirect but telling acknowledgement of Iran’s massive unemployment problem --- it follows just a week after statements by Khamenei to Iran’s Chamber of Commerce in which the Supreme Leader urged economic optimism and restraint in publishing discouraging items regarding the economy. The statement was published to virtually every state-owned or affiliated news agency in Farsi, as well as the the Supreme Leader’s website.

Ayatollah Khamenei published the plan with advice from the Expediency Council, indicating once again the high level of importance placed upon solving the unemployment crisis in Iran. It is also worth noting that the Supreme Leader’s other statements the same week were translated into English on his website --- however, perhaps due to concerns over publicizing Iran’s unemployment situation, the 13-point plan is not featured in English on the site though a copy in Farsi was posted.

The Supreme Leader’s strategies for improving Iran’s abysmal unemployment situation are as follows:

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The Latest from Iran (21 July): Stand By Your (Supreme) Man

2010 GMT: Literature Watch (cont.). More about the poetic debut of the head of the Basij militia, Mohammad Reza Naqdi (see 0710 GMT)....

Naqdi's effort, which has failed to impress our Literary Correspondent, is titled “The Youth and Soft War", rhythmically (or not-so-rhythmically) takes on Twitter, Facebook, rap music, and jazz. The opening lines, which may lose a bit in translation:

He [ failed in hunting me with his gun. He came back with lowly hired musicians, the Internet, and musical instruments/

His navy hasn’t been able to rein me in. He came with an eye-catching doll/
Bombs and missiles failed to scare me. He came back with the rumor-spreading Twitter and Facebook/
He used chemical weapons and I still didn’t back off. He came with crack and heroin.

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Iran Special: Revisiting the Horrors of Kahrizak Prison --- The Guilty, the Victims, and Their Families

A Memorial to 3 Who Died at Kahrizak“Kahrizak” ---- Although familiar to locals, the word was only elevated to heights of infamy, in the most bitter, painful and tragic ways, in the disputed 2009 Presidential election.  The public --- both domestic and foreign --- learned about a place called Kahrizak Prison, a detention centre where those protesting the election results were subject to mistreatment, beatings, abuse, torture, and, in some cases, death.

Kahrizak is located on the south side of Shahr Ray, a small town south of Tehran.  Under a plan introduced in 2004, with the pretext of “collecting the gangs and thugs”, the Islamic Republic’s security forces began using Kahrizak as a holding place for  those arrested.  Shortly afterward, scores of journalists, human rights activists, and the Prisoners Rights Defense Committee (PRDC) began objecting to the mistreatment of the detaineds.  The journalist and human rights activist, Shiva Nazar Ahari, and PRDC member Mehdi Mahmoudian were among the activists raising public awareness about the dire conditions. 

But the efforts of Mahmoudian and other journalists and human rights activists fell short of drawing local or foreign attention to the real magnitude of the catastrophe.  Many of those protesting the 2009 election were transferred to Kahrizak where, according to eyewitnesses, they ended up in groups of 30-40 shoved inside containers with a maximum capacity of 10 people.  The detainees were kept in the worst possible physical and sanitary conditions, in the scorching summer heat, inside these containers.  They were repeatedly tortured.  Many of them, according to other prisoners and former officials, were raped.  

This is why the word Kahrizak is now intertwined with and reminiscent of several people’s names: from those in charge of this prison, to those beating and torturing the prisoners, to the whistleblowers of the place, and finally to the victims of the unspeakably brutal violence inflicted in the centre.

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Iran Film Poster of Day: Khamenei & Ahmadinejad Star in "A Separation"

A sequel to Asghar Farhadi's "Nader and Simin: A Separation", winner of national and international awards, stars the Supreme Leader and the Iranian President:

The Latest from Iran (13 July): The Opposition Re-Marks Its Ground

1700 GMT: Economy Watch. Ayande News reviews the increasing price of basics, from 350% for oil to 180% for food.

An EA source said today that, in some parts of Tehran, the price of sangak flatbread has risen from 100 tomans (less than 10 cents) to 1000 tomans (about 90 cents). He confirmed that both unemployment and inflation were rising sharply.

1655 GMT: Supreme Leader Brother's Watch. Seyed Hadi Khamenei, the reformist brother of Ayatollah Khamenei, has asked, "How do you expect us to participate in elections?" He said there had been thousands of hours of insults against reformists which had not been possible to answer.

1650 GMT: Supreme Leader Watch. Ali Saeedi, the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards, has said that people can change government but not the system of velayat-e faqih (clerical supremacy) --- "If they choose what God wants, it's OK."

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Iran Document: A New Green Manifesto?

And now a mystery: yesterday a collection of activists, reportedly inside Iran, put out a document which claims to be a new path for the opposition. The "manifesto" emerged outside the country through two outlets: Martin Fletcher in The Times of London and insideIRAN, a project of The Century Foundation in the US.

The document is forthright in its language and general in its ambition: "the complete subordination of all government and state posts to direct popular sovereignty", while putting forth the Green Movement as an umbrella for different groups who were pursuing rights long before the 2009 Presidential election.

But there is an important starting question, especially amidst the current debate amongst reformists and activists over the way forward inside and outside the Iranian system: who are these "intellectuals who are leaders in the Green Movement in Tehran"?

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The Latest from Iran (10 July): Sifting the Claims on Khamenei v. Ahmadinejad

Mojtaba and Ali Khamenei1900 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Masoumeh Dehghan, the wife of lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, has been released on $30,000 bail after her detention last week.

1625 GMT: The Revolutionary Guards Do Politics. Yadollah Javani, the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has followed up the declaration of the IRGC commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, by declaring that former President Mohammad Khatami, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mehdi Karroubi are "leaders of fitna (sedition) and subversion".

Javani emphasised that the IRGC had a central role in stopping the reformists' scenario of sedition, with Jafari's words this past week as a continuing alert.

Amir Mohebian, the editor of the Resalat, has begged to disagree, however: calling Khatami "anti-revolutionary" is a damage to the Iranian system.

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