Iran appears to be taking measures to tighten online censorship ahead of its presidential vote.

In recent days, a long list of online activities has been designated as criminal, including calling for an election boycott, organizing sit-ins or protests, and insulting presidential candidates.

Simultaneously, reports by Iran's Fars and ISNA news agencies say that linking to Facebook, Twitter, and other websites that are blocked in Iran, or even promoting blocked websites, has also become a crime.

Iran is already one of the world's harshest online censors. The regime bans tens of thousands of websites it considers immoral or a threat to national security, including news websites and social-media sites.

The new measures, if enforced, would put increased pressure on people who use the web or social media as platforms for online activism.

Last week, the U.S. government imposed sanctions that target FATA, Iran's cyberpolice, which was formed in 2009 and have hacked into e-mail accounts related to political action, deleted antigovernment blogs, and arrested bloggers.

Several activists and bloggers have been jailed in recent years for online activism, including for Facebook posts. In November, blogger Sattar Beheshti died in custody after being arrested by the cybercrimes unit.

The head of the Workgroup for the Determination of Criminal Content, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, told Fars on February 11 that his group compiled the new list of Internet crimes at its February 6 meeting, which was attended by several officials, including the state prosecutor and two legislators.

Wide Latitude

Some of the crimes on the list are so vaguely worded -- "disturbing public opinion" and "giving a black picture and discussing subjects against the realities of Iran" -- that authorities will have wide latitude in determining if a crime has been committed.

Other new crimes include publishing and promoting news of an election boycott, the illegal use of government websites for campaigning purposes, publishing materials in cyberspace aimed at interfering in the election, and online campaigning before or after the official campaign date.

One day after the list was issued, linking to and promoting blocked websites was also declared a crime.

The semiofficial ISNA news agency reported that a new offense was added to Article 21 of Iran's Computer Crimes Law.

"Before, many of the country's websites, including some official sites and news agencies, had links to Facebook and Twitter," ISNA wrote. "Now, by adding a clause to the list of criminal content, the websites are required to remove those links."

Fars confirmed the news and said websites and blogs that violate the new law will be held responsible.

At least two Iranian news agencies and several websites are reporting that an Iranian official in charge of reconstruction efforts in Lebanon has been assassinated by "Zionists."

The official, pictures of whom have been posted by the hard-line Fars news agency, is identified as Commander Haj Hassan Shateri.

Fars, which is closely aligned with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, says Shateri was "in charge of the Iranian delegation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and later in Lebanon."

It says Shateri was involved in "war engineering and road building" in war zones. Shateri is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, where he was a Revolutionary Guards commander.

According to the report, he was killed somewhere outside of Iran on February 12 by "the executioners" of Israel.

The account gave no details about where Shateri was allegedly killed or how he died.

The news appears to be corroborated by the Abna news agency, which on February 13 reported that the head of Iran's Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, visited Shateri's family the same day to confirm "his martyrdom" and offer condolences.

It is not clear whether Shateri was a member of the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said to be tasked with conducting overseas operations.

Western governments have accused Iran and the Quds force of aiding the bloody conflict in Syria by providing military and financial support to Damascus. Iran denies this and says it has helped prevent the massacre of civilians.

In recent years, several Iranian nuclear scientists have been targeted in a series of assassinations blamed on Israel.

Shateri's funeral will be held on February 14 in Tehran, according to Fars. He will be buried in his hometown of Semnan.

-- Golnaz Esfandiari

A "high five" has caused double trouble for two politicians from Germany and Iran.

Germany's Green Party Chairwoman Claudia Roth and Iran's ambassador to Germany, Reza Sheikh Attar, joyfully greeted each other at the annual Munich Security Conference earlier this month with a "high five."

The celebratory hand gesture -- more often seen among athletes than high-brow politicians or diplomats -- was caught on camera and quickly went viral.

The video has been covered widely in German media and has been shared extensively among Iranians on social media and blogs, eliciting controversy and criticism.

The criticism of Roth has focused on her seeming chumminess with an Iranian official who has been accused of human rights abuses. Roth was named "Loser of the Day" by the German daily "Bild" over the image.

A spokesperson for Roth, who has criticized human rights abuses in Iran in the past, downplayed the incident. The spokesperson was quoted as saying that Roth was committed to the "Iranian opposition movement" but gave the ambassador a high five because they had known each other for years.

Attar, for his part, has gone to great lengths to explain that his hand didn't touch Roth's, even though he appears to initiate the contact. In the Islamic republic, casual physical contact with women who are not close relatives is considered taboo, and Attar is banned from shaking hands with women in his capacity as a dipolomat.

In an interview with the hard-line Fars news agency, Attar said that he merely raised his hand to greet Roth.

"Because of laws and for religious reasons, we don't shake hands with women," Attar explained. "Therefore, as a sign of respect I raised my hand -- I didn't raise my hand to shake her hand -- Mrs. Roth also raised her hand. Of course the distance was small but no touching took place."

Attar accused "Bild" of supporting "Zionists" and the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), which is considered a terrorist organization by the Islamic republic.

He said while the German Green Party and the Islamic republic differ on some issues, including human rights issues, they both agree on "the danger" posed by MKO.

Referring to the outcry, Attar claimed that, "With this move [the MKO] wanted to pressure Roth."

Attar also said he has penned an article in which he denied accusations that he had ordered the execution of hundreds of Kurdish activists during his tenure as the governor of Iran's northwestern Kurdistan Province. He said the piece had not yet been published.

Finding ways to avoid touching female politicians and female world leaders has always been a challenge for Iranian politicians and diplomats. Often they bow instead of shaking hands.

During his recent visit to Egypt, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was seen greeting a woman in the Hindu manner -- by pressing both hands together.

Ironically, while shaking hands with women in public is forbidden in the Islamic republic, security forces show little restraint when dealing with women protesters.

YouTube videos that emerged during the mass protests that followed Ahmadinejad's hotly disputed reelection in 2009 showed security forces beating women with their hands, feet, or batons here:


and here:


Women are also routinely physically mistreated by the morality police during hijab crackdowns, which officials say are carried out to preserve Islamic values.

-- Golnaz Esfandiari

Resistance is in the air in Tehran, with calls of "Viva Spring" ushering in the election season and signaling that President Mahmud Ahmadinejad does not intend to go quietly.

The slogan, widely seen as an endorsement for the candidacy of Ahmadinejad's right-hand man, Esfandiari Rahim Mashaei, has been used repeatedly by the outgoing president and his supporters in recent days.

With Ahmadinejad engaged in a power struggle with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his powerful allies, critics cite the slogan as evidence of the "deviant current," a term used by Iranian officials to refer to Ahmadinejad's inner circle. The president, who is completing his second and final term, has been accused of violating election laws and engineering the vote for his successor.

In the eyes of Ahmadinejad's opponents, calls of "Viva Spring" mark the unofficial launch of Mashaei's election campaign and herald an attempt by Ahmadinejad to retain power by installing Mashaei as his placeholder until he is eligible to run again. The scenario has been compared to the Putin/Medvedev situation in Russia in which Vladimir Putin served as prime minister while his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, took over as president for one term.

When about 100 of Ahmadinejad's supporters welcomed him last week in Tehran upon his return from Egypt, they reportedly held posters with the slogan "Viva Spring." Mashaei, who received a hero's welcome along with Ahmadinejad, has indicated that "spring" is a reference to the return of the "Hidden Imam," who Shi'ite Muslims believe will reappear and bring justice to the world. "We have one spring. That is the Mahdi, who will come soon," he has been quoted as saying.

Ahmadinejad himself used the slogan at the end of his February 10 speech marking the 34th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The same day, "Viva Spring" surfaced on posters held by a number of individuals as they violently disrupted a speech in Qom by Ahmadinejad's rival, parliament speaker Ali Larijani, prompting him to leave the scene. The hard-line Alef website said chants in favor of Mashaei's presidency were also heard from the crowd.

Defying His Enemies

Mohammad Esmail Kowsari, a lawmaker and a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander, believes Ahmadinejad's use of the slogan is intended for the June 14 vote and, as such, is a "clear violation" and "engineering of the election."

Another lawmaker, Mohammad Hossein Asafri, has listed "Viva Spring" among the slogans of the "deviant current," of which Mashaei is considered a top figure. Mashaei is widely despised by the clerical establishment for promoting an Iranian doctrine instead of an Islamic one.

​​

Mohammad Hossein Ziya, a journalist who campaigned for opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi, believes the February 10 speech watched by millions of Iranians is part of a calculated effort. "All of these [developments], including a poll released by the government daily 'Iran' that claimed that Mashaei has 35 percent support in 24 areas of Tehran, are signs of an organized move by this group to magnify Mashaei and to use him," he says.

Scott Lucas, an Iran specialist at Britain's Birmingham University, agrees that Ahmadinejad was endorsing Mashaei. But there was more to the speech. "The bigger part of the story is that Ahmadinejad not only said, 'I want you to support Rahim Mashaei,' he then went on to say, 'My opponents are going to try to rig the elections.' And he called on the Iranian people to stand up against this and vote for the best man," Lucas says.

"As far as I know that is the most explicit call by any politician in terms of a warning about the elections being manipulated," Lucas adds. "We've had elements of this in the past from various politicians but for Ahmadinejad to do this it's not only a show of defiance in the face of his rivals, it's a show of defiance, in my opinion, in the face of the supreme leader."

All The Aces, Or Just A Bluff?

Ahmadinejad, whose 2009 reelection led to allegations of massive fraud, warned in his speech about those who are planning "to engineer" the election. He was apparently referring to comments made in January by Khamenei's representative to the IRGC, Ali Saidi, in which he said the "rational and logical engineering of the election" is the duty of the IRGC. Saidi added that engineering did not mean interfering in the elections.

Ahmadinejad's speech comes amid a dispute between the president and his opponents that has become increasingly ugly.

Last week, Ahmadinejad and Larijani engaged in an unprecedented public exchange of accusations. In the course of an open parliament session, Ahmadinejad's labor minister was dismissed and the president released a secret video recording that allegedly exposed corruption by members of the Larijani family.

In recent months a number of Ahmadinejad's allies have been charged or jailed on corruption and other charges. Last week, former Tehran prosecutor Said Mortazavi, nicknamed the "Butcher of the Press," over his role in the closure of newspapers and jailing of journalists, was jailed for one day at Evin prison.

Ahmadinejad, once a Khamenei protege, has become isolated and weakened as a result of his fight with the supreme leader. Yet he has refused to give in and has even upped the ante.

Analysts suggest the president is worried about his future and the future of his close aides once his presidency ends. Ahmadinejad has threatened to reveal damaging files believed to have been obtained last year when he fired an intelligence minister who was an ally of Khamenei and who was quickly reinstated by the supreme leader. The February 10 disruption of Larijani's speech in Qom and the allegations of corruption against him and his brothers is seen as a warning by Ahmadinejad that he will not go down without a fight.

Journalist Ziya says the bold moves by Ahmadinejad and his recent speech appear to suggest that "his hands are full." "There have been rumors that while Ahmadinejad was in charge of the Intelligence Ministry he gained access to important documents," he says. "I think we're seeing the correctness of those rumors in the events of the past two weeks, particularly in Ahmadinejad's policy of attack."

Lucas, however, considers Ahmadinejad "finished" and believes he might be bluffing. "If I've got a weak hand, sometimes the worst thing to do is simply to fold the hand and give away," the analyst says. "Instead I'm going to pretend I've got a really strong hand to take this as far as I can and make my opponents back down."

Both analysts believe that Khamenei is likely to continue his strategy of containment when it comes to the combative president. Ahmadinejad's next move is more difficult to predict.

Iran's Guardians Council has approved changes to the country’s election law that significantly diminish the government’s authority over elections. 

A Guardians Council spokesman said the new law stipulates that elections will be run by a new central election board made up of representatives from the three branches of power, as well as seven "national, political, social, and cultural" figures.

Previously, the Interior Ministry was tasked with organizing and overseeing all elections. Now it will play a much smaller role.

The changes, which come as the Islamic republic prepares for a June 14 presidential vote, appear to be a preemptive move to prevent President Mahmud Ahmadinejad from using his office to manipulate the vote.

“Most of the changes were made because of the concerns of the conservative critics of the Iranian president who are worried that Ahmadinejad and his team could try to interfere in the election and influence the results," says Iranian journalist Roozbeh Mirebrahimi.

"They have therefore limited to a great extent the authority of the [Interior Ministry] to prevent such a possibility. Reformists and opposition members brought fraud charges against Ahmadinejad in the 2009 vote."

The 11-member Central Executive Election Board will start its work three months before the election. It will be headed by the interior minister and include the intelligence minister, the state prosecutor, and a representative of the parliament, in addition to seven prominent figures, both public and private.

Those seven would be chosen by a committee of 30 people nominated by the Interior Ministry and approved by the prosecutor-general. The committee would select seven permanent election committee members and four alternates.

Some lawmakers who supported the changes argued that the new board will be trusted by the public and thus, lessen the possibility of allegations of fraud against the government. 

Power Grab?

When first introduced, the proposed changes triggered a new dispute between Ahmadinejad and his powerful conservative rivals, some of whom think the populist president is orchestrating a Putin/Medvedev-style power grab.

Ahmadinejad, who cannot run for a third consecutive term, blasted the proposed changes as unconstitutional. The government’s official newspaper, “Iran,” also criticized the bill for stripping the government of “all its rights” to organize the elections.

Ahmadinejad, once a protege of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fell out of favor long ago because of a power struggle with Khamenei and his allies.

Other changes debated in parliament last fall would have required candidates running for election to be between 45 and 75 years old and have a master's degree, or the equivalent, from a seminary of a traditional Islamic institution of higher education.

Those requirements were dropped after the Guardians Council instructed lawmakers to delete them, according to Iranian media reports. The Guardians Council has to approve all the parliament’s bills before they become law.

According to Mirebrahimi, the powerful Guardians Council -- which also vets all candidates -- has a record of making politically motivated decisions. “One of the main factors in the Guardians Council’s decisions is whether the bills strengthen or weaken the council and the bodies that are in line with the council," he says.

He adds that it’s likely that the Guardians Council thought the proposed requirements in the draft bill would weaken its role in deciding who can run as a candidate.

The hard-line body has in the past disqualified women as well as liberal-minded candidates and candidates whose views it deemed un-Islamic or not in line with the clerical establishment.

In a rare move, some of the reformist newspapers that were raided by Iranian security officials on January 27 and whose writers were detained have publicly protested against the crackdown.

On its front page, Iran's reformist "Shargh" daily objected to the arrest of one its staff members, journalist Pouria Alami.

​​In its January 30 issue, the newspaper published an empty space where Alami's column would usually have appeared and explained that "it will not be printed until further notice."

Alami is one of more than a dozen journalists who were arrested over the weekend in an attempt to silence the reformist press ahead of the June 14 presidential vote. (Read more about the crackdown here.)

The "Bahar" daily, which also came under attack by the authorities, has also protested against the raids on newspapers and the arrest of journalists.

"Our journalists deserve respect," writes "Bahar."

The paper adds that it is not possible at this point to comment on the charges of "spying and ties with foreign news organizations" that have been brought against the detained journalists. It adds, however, that it is not clear how 14 journalists without any such backgrounds could suddenly have been detained on those charges.

"Bahar" writes that the detainees are all well-known journalists who have decided to remain in Iran and that they have been working with newspapers that have been legally published in the country for years, while being fully aware of the red lines that cannot be crossed in the Islamic republic.

"Therefore, it doesn't seem that they could come close to such charges," the paper says.

Journalists who have accepted to report in Iran under such difficult conditions and to work within the framework of Iranian law deserve respect, "Bahar" says.

Many Iranians have also protested against the arrests by posting pictures of the detained journalists on their Facebook pages.

In recent years, especially after the brutal crackdown that followed Iran's disputed 2009 presidential vote, dozens of journalists and bloggers have been either jailed or forced to leave the country.

Journalism is one of the most dangerous and difficult professions in Iran. The renewed press crackdown highlights this fact.

-- Golnaz Esfandiari

Iran has renewed its crackdown on the press less than five months before the country’s June 14 presidential vote.
 
Since January 26 more than a dozen journalists from six media outlets have been detained.
 
The move is being seen as an attempt to silence independent coverage of the presidential election and a signal that the regime is willing to take preemptive action against people it believes could create trouble.

Iranian authorities are determined to have a “peaceful” election and prevent the kind of mass unrest that erupted in Tehran and several other cities in 2009 following the disputed reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Observers say the press crackdown is part of the campaign to make sure everything goes according to plan.
 
IDs Confiscated

Prominent Tehran-based opposition activist Mohammad Nourizad told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that by arresting journalists the authorities are issuing a warning to the country’s few reformist publications to be cautious in their election coverage.

“We’re moving toward the election, [and so the authorities] need to take measures against the reformist press,” Nourizad said.

Journalists and media outlets are frequent targets of the establishment, which has a record of cracking down on the press during times of national sensitivity. 

Nourizad said some reform-minded publications have been reporting that Iran is struggling under Western sanctions and publishing other “negative” stories that are not to the liking of the clerical establishment.  

Most of the journalists were detained during January 27 raids at the offices of reformist newspapers “Arman,” “Bahar,” “Etemaad,” “Shargh,” and the weekly “Aseman.” Security forces are said to have confiscated their IDs and cell phones, searched the offices, filmed the staff, and taken away documents and computers. They reportedly also raided the homes of some of the detained journalists.

The Fars news agency, said to be affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported on January 27 that around 11 journalists had been rounded up on the orders of the judiciary. Fars said the detained journalists were close to “the sedition,” which is the term used by Iranian officials to refer to the opposition Green Movement that emerged in 2009.

Arrest Warrants

Milad Fadayi, a political editor with the semiofficial ILNA news agency, is among the detainees. He and another colleague from the “Bahar” daily were reportedly detained on January 26 and taken to Tehran’s Evin prison.

Reports say one more journalist, Hossein Yaghchi, was detained on January 28.

Another, Motahareh Shafiee, who was detained on January 27, was reportedly released because of health issues.

The French media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says arrest warrants have been issued for more journalists.

RSF’s Reza Moini says several journalists have been interrogated by security officials this month about the June vote.

“Journalists from all over Iran, especially from Tehran, have been summoned by the security office of the Revolutionary Guards -- as well as the Intelligence Ministry -- and interrogated," Moini said.

"They’ve been mainly asked about the June vote, especially about the recent speech of Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei, in which he had called for an end to talk about free elections. Some of the journalists were warned and some were even told not to vote.”

The semiofficial news Mehr agency said the journalists were arrested for cooperating with Persian-language “counterrevolutionary” media organizations.

Iranian Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini said on January 28 that the charges against the detained journalists are not related to their “press” activities. “It seems that they have been arrested over security accusations,” he said.

He said his ministry is investigating and plans to release more information to the public.

The arrests come about a week after Iranian Prosecutor-General Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei said he had received information from “reliable sources” that a number of journalists were collaborating with “Westerners and counterrevolutionaries.”

The renewed crackdown on journalists inside Iran comes amid pressure on Iranian journalists working for international news outlets, whose families have been interrogated and threatened. Many have been harassed in an online campaign aimed at discrediting them.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranked Iran as the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists in its latest prison census, released in December. Forty-five journalists were behind bars in Iran in 2012, according to CPJ.

Radio Farda broadcasters Mohammad Zarghami and Roozbeh Bolhari contributed to this report.