In response to a question from a reporter who asked about the allocation of a million ‎Dollars for the assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the spokesperson for ‎Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hassan Ghashghavi said, “You know that the flow of ‎information and expression of opinion in Iran enjoys freedom.”‎

With all due respect to the spokesperson, as far as we know expression of opinion is ‎absolutely not of the characteristic that he described. So it would have been better if a ‎more meaningful justification for announcing a reward for Hosni Mubarak’s head was ‎thought of.‎

Furthermore, it is very doubtful that Egyptians will accept the justification of the foreign ‎ministry spokesperson because if a similar announcement was made by some Egyptian ‎groups against the head of Iran’s government, most certainly the Iranian foreign ministry ‎spokesperson would not have accepted from his Egyptian counterpart for two reasons. ‎First, in Egypt too there is no trace of the kind of freedom that Mr. Ghashghavi attributed ‎to Iran. Second, what is the relationship between posting an award for killing the head of ‎a government and freedom of expression and information flow?‎

In fact, what would Mr. Ghashghavi say if the spokesperson for the Egyptian foreign ‎ministry reminded him that an Iranian student organization was recently the victim of ‎harsh government propaganda for issuing a statement in which it criticized the Iranian ‎government’s official position regarding the atrocities taking place in Gaza and it even ‎banned a mass-circulated newspaper for publishing parts of the statement. ‎

Furthermore, if a group or a semi-government agency in a country that truly enjoyed ‎freedom of expression and information flow announced a reward for the assassination of ‎the head of Iran’s government, would the spokesperson of Iran’s foreign ministry accept ‎a justification of the kind that he himself presented?‎

This attitude demonstrates that with the passage of 30 years since the victory of the 1979 ‎revolution, the technical concept of a “government” has not yet taken form in Iran, and ‎the behavior of authorities does not fit in with the standards of a government.‎

In Iran, some groups that are in power perceive themselves to be “revolutionary” and ‎therefore do not feel they are bound by the rules that a government feels it must respect.‎

The proof of this is not difficult to see. One only has to look at the daily news and ‎commentary published by Keyhan newspaper (which is run by a government budget and ‎whose manager is appointed by the Supreme Leader of the country)! Is this a private ‎newspaper or the spokesperson for a powerful faction inside the government?‎

Iranian officials have never been willing to resolve this basic issue and appear to have a ‎desire to portray this publication to be independent from the government while at the ‎same introducing it as the mouthpiece for a powerful ruling force whenever they deem ‎so.‎

When a newspaper through the claims of advancing the view of the ruling regime ‎advocates attacking the interests of this or that country, what image of the state is it ‎propagating around the world?‎

Do government authorities concur with the views of newspapers such as Keyhan or para-‎military groups who announce rewards for the assassination of others? If they do, they ‎why are they not willing to take up responsibility for supporting such media or groups ‎when they are confronted with protests from foreign governments? And if they do not, is ‎it not necessary for once and for all to declare the position of the regime regarding these ‎media and extremist groups?‎