Sune Engel Rasmussen looks at the state of censorship in Hassan Rouhani’s Iran and finds that, while the restrictive policies of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been rolled back, much remains the same as always:
Authorities continue to close media outlets with the stroke of a pen. Social media is banned, and millions of websites are still blocked. Scores of political prisoners including the aging Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who inspired the 2009 Green Movement, remain locked up. In the first two months of 2014 alone, Iran executed almost 100 people.
The government is not solely to blame.
Executions are administered by the judiciary, which answers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The same goes for freedom of the press, as [culture minister Ali] Jannati pointed out after the closure of the popular reformist weekly Aseman: “Shutting down the newspapers is out of our hands.” As for opening wide the gates to the internet, the president needs to maneuver the 22-man Supreme Council for Cyberspace, which is dominated by conservatives.
Although it is possible for the government to challenge other pillars of power, Rouhani may gauge that he doesn’t have the political capital to do so, given domestic opposition to the nuclear negotiations. Everyone remembers President Mohammad Khatami’s failed attempts at reform in the late 1990s. Yet, some don’t believe Rouhani had real intentions in the first place. There’s a Persian saying, “The yellow dog is the brother of the jackal,” which means: One ruler is just as bad as the next one.
The Dish 