Silencing the Voices of Dissent

The telephone call that announced the ban of Iran's foremost independent daily, Shargh, came late this morning. "I have good news for you," said Mohammad Atrianfar, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, putting the receiver down and taking a calm sip of tea. "We've been shut down." I happened to be in his office at the time, waiting to talk about Iran's nuclear confrontation with the West. Shargh has bravely broadened debate here about the issue, publishing critics of the government's hardline stance and informing Iranians that such radicalism carries high costs. The closure, suggests Atrianfar, may have been provoked by a recent caricature on the nuclear negotiations. He lays the cartoon on his desk, and points to the two figures it shows on a chess board. One is a horse, the other a donkey bathed in a halo of light. The donkey could be taken to represent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has in the past reported feeling surrounded by halos.

	TIME's Tehran correspondent examines what daily life is really like in Iran • Raising a Child in Iran's Cultural Divide Coping with the gulf between Iranian private and public life is a difficult skill even for adults to manage. So what should we teach our children? • A Nation of Holocaust Deniers? The president's skepticism is, surprisingly, shared by many Iranians. But that doesn't mean they are anti-Israel. Let me explain • You've Come Only a Little Way, Baby Bans on foreign, Kurdish and even some ancient Persian names for newborns have been around since the Islamic revolution but are now letting up slightly • Iran's Caesarean Section Craze Well-accustomed to elective surgery, Iranian women are choosing C-sections at such a high rate that it's a challenge now to find a doctor who will perform a "medieval" vaginal birth • How Iran's Populist Lost His Popularity With prices rising and the economy stagnating, Iranians view their President as less a national hero than the latest in a long line of ineffectual bureaucrats • Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam! The Mahdi, an imam who happens to be Ahmadinejad's favorite, has become the object of frenzied and government-nurtured worship • Silencing the Voices of Dissent Inside the forced shutdown of Iran's most popular reformist paper, Shargh • Who are the Women Behind the Men Running Iran? First ladies are usually kept in hiding, but one outspoken wife is causing big problems for Ahmadinejad • The Backlash Against Iran's Role in Lebanon The notion that Iranian dollars are going to Lebanese Shi`ites is fueling animosity between the Persian community and the Arab world

Within minutes of the phone call, Atrianfar's mobile began to ring incessantly. Busy with a television crew clearing out of his office, he handed it to me to answer, but asked me not to confirm the closure yet. I recognized the voice of the first caller, a distraught reformist and former official who was clearly careening down a highway. "Can we tell Saeed Laylaz?" I asked Atrianfar. He nodded. Laylaz is a contributor to Shargh and a member of the reformist inner clique, who is always the first to hear about everything. At such moments, reformists give up their usual pretense of invincibility. "These people, they're... they're..." at a loss for a polite expression, Laylaz uttered an angry string of obscenities and hangs up. Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy minister, walked past the door morosely. Never had Shargh's offices so closely resembled a reformist refugee camp, where former officials and intellectuals milled about waiting to be pushed into further obscurity.

Mohammad Quchani, the newspaper's renowned columnist, edged his way into the room, and asked Atrianfar whether he thought the closure might be temporary. They argued briefly over the most appropriate metaphor for the situation. Was banning a newspaper more like a car breaking down on the road, or a plane shutting off mid-flight? Was this going to be a crash or a stall? As they discussed, I sat thinking about how much I would miss Shargh, with its ironic headlines, perfectly pitched gibes at the government, and relentless reporting on Iran's social ills. Who else is going to take on the current administration's weird belief in itself as a miracle? Will any other newspaper publish important essays on secularism and democracy? Such debates are at the heart of Iran's internal struggles over governance and, until now, there was room for them in Shargh. "Iranians are people accustomed to having a political life of the mind, an existence in which they can have dialogue, argue, and refine their vision for Iranian society," said Atrianfar. "Having this taken away, being left with just a physical life where you cannot question or talk about anything, this is a kind of death."