ABSTRACT
Much has been said and written about the changing structure and nature of politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran since May 1997. Changes in Western perception of Iran as well as the Iranian press have been explicitly related to the election of the “moderate” clergyman, Mohammad Khatami. The presidential election turned out to be even bigger than expected. A record 88 percent of eligible voters, the biggest of all in presidential elections and only second in terms of popular participation in any election since 1979, did cast their votes.1
Khatami had the backing of 69 percent of the voters. Since then the concept of civil society and its relationship to the state has become a growing concern among Iranian intellectuals. The press, in the absence of a proper political party system, has become a key space wherein the debates about the nature of political participation and the contours of the public sphere can be articulated. President Khatami was elected in 1997 with promises of greater press freedom and more diversity, and this was an important part of his election manifesto and one of the main reasons for his success. Yet the recent period has been full of contradictions, with an increase in the number of licensed titles immediately following his victory, but also a campaign of growing vehemence against the press. The censoring and closing of newspapers, the harassment and arrest of journalists have become only too familiar in the past few years. The advocacy of “civil society” by the pro-Khatami press forced the conservative press and the proponents of conservatives’ policy to retaliate. The new political space that emerged after 1997, however, was inextricably linked with government, and as the continuing struggle over the press demonstrates, the arena of competition among various social, economic, and regional interests. “Civil society” did depend very much on the state and did not last long as the two pillars of Khatami’s reform (the rule of law and civil society) were unreal and so easily crumbled in the face of the realities of Iran.
