Nov 8, 2017

The hard-line Kayhan daily was ordered suspended for two days Nov. 8 after receiving a warning from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance about a controversial headline.

The headline, “Ansar-Allah’s missile fires at Riyadh, the next target, Dubai,” prompted many in Iran to slam the influential newspaper. Kayhan had gone against the position of both Iranian political officials as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose commander denied Saudi and US allegations about Tehran’s role in the Nov. 4 Yemeni missile strike on Riyadh’s airport.

The editor-in-chief of Kayhan is appointed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Of note, Jomuri-e Eslami newspaper, whose editor is also appointed by the supreme leader, criticized Kayhan for its headline. Thus, the remarkable step of its suspension by the judiciary indicates that the political establishment wants to signal that Kayhan is not the spokesman of the Islamic Republic. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is controlled by moderate President Hassan Rouhani's administration.

In other news, a former senior Iranian diplomat has revealed that hard-liners at one point sought to put Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has served as Iran’s foreign minister since 2013, on trial. It is unclear precisely when this occurred, but Sadegh Kharrazi, a former ambassador to the United Nations and France, was speaking about the Reformist era (1997-2005) when he made the remarks about Zarif, indicating that such pressure may have arisen after the collapse of Iran’s nuclear negotiations with Europe in 2005, which coincided with the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Speaking at a conference in Iran focused on the country’s relationship with the United States, Kharrazi said Nov. 7, “There was no period like that of the Reformist era in which we made efforts in foreign policy, but [hard-liners] went so far that they sought to put the best people of this country, including Dr. Zarif, on trial.”