In the 170-year history of Iranian journalism, never before have journalists and publishers been ‎facing as much pressure and oppression as they are now. ‎

A while ago a friend of mine, who is a publisher in Tehran, said that although he has always ‎faced problems under the Islamic Republic, there never was a time when he experienced all the ‎problems at the same time. There have always been levers of power in Iran's state-owned ‎institutions which the state has used to implement its macro- and micro-level policies with ‎respect to the press, journalists and publishers. These illegal levers of power allow state officials ‎in Iran to aid their supporters and affiliates and to limit others, if necessary even drive them into ‎bankruptcy and out of competition. ‎

State officials are able to do this through, for example, granting financial grants or expensive ‎advertisements or cheap paper quotas to affiliated newspapers and publishers and refusing to ‎issue permits for critical newspapers and publishers, or worse yet, direct and indirect censorship ‎of the press and books and dozens of other announced and unannounced measures. These ‎measures are like mighty weapons in the hands of Ministry of Culture officials to aid whomever ‎that they wish and stifle whomever that they do not approve of, for one reason or another. ‎

The aforementioned levers have been used periodically in accordance with conditions and ‎opportunities and policies of the culture minister or the group in charge of the ministry. In some ‎eras (as during Khatami's time) state pressure was decreased and in other eras pressure was ‎increased. In the past three years, however, all levers of pressure have been fully utilized against ‎critical media outlets, publishers and artists. Currently the road for free travel of information and ‎publication of ideas is fully closed by organs such as the Ministry of Culture. Not even the ‎situation in the 1980s and during the Iran-Iraq war rivaled today's. ‎

Another aspect of peculiarity of the present situation is that, in using the present levers, the ‎government and Ministry of Culture and security organizations are trying not to leave the ‎smallest opening for presence of critical voices, which can protest and take their complaint, ‎through legal channels, to legal institutions inside the country or at least legitimate and respected ‎international institutions. The judiciary, far from processing complaints against illegal actions of ‎the Ministry of culture and other state institutions perpetrated against critical media outlets, ‎actually openly engages in suppressing journalists and intellectuals. ‎

If in the past, and especially during the Khatami administration, publications were shut don by ‎the judiciary, or journalists were arrested, or a book was suspended or censored, there would ‎have been widespread and somewhat effective protests by society and in the press and Majlis and ‎administration, and at least the autocrats were forced to pay a price. ‎

Presently, however, the administration's illegal actions are not provable (for instance, critical ‎publications are not given publication permits so that they do not have to be shut down later), ‎complaints are not processed, there is no capacity for widespread protest, and no one among the ‎public and especially in the world really knows what is going on in Iran. ‎

The bitter truth is that the writers, journalists and artists of this land are slowly and silently ‎silenced and destroyed. Very recently, a weekly like "Shahrvan-e Emrooz," which was ‎published through the determination of the remainder of the generation of reformists journalists, ‎and was an honorable phenomenon in Iran's press family, was banned in an illegal manner. The ‎same took place with respect to "Shargh" and "Ham-Mihan" in the not very distant past. Who is ‎left to protest and which protest is attended to? Ho many people are left who can understand the ‎depth of pain and even suppressed rage of journalists who suddenly are unemployed and exposed ‎to government pressure?‎

Finally, though it has a been a while since the conclusion of the golden years of Iranian ‎journalism (1997 to 2000), and only a handful of semi-independent and critical publications are ‎left which are able to remain active by respecting all the established legal and illegal red lines ‎and in very difficult conditions, even this much seems to be intolerable for the government. The ‎government's level of intolerance in face of criticism is so high that another wave of ‎confrontation (with the handful of remaining publications) seems inevitable. The difference is ‎that, this time, not even conservative publications that criticize the administration from time to ‎time will be spared the purge. ‎