Iranian state-run newspaper protests arrest of its journalists

A state-run Iranian newspaper protested the arrest of its chief editor and 39 other employees, a move that highlights tensions between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his political opponents.

Today’s front page of Iran, a Tehran-based daily overseen by Ahmadinejad’s press adviser, was half blank. The gesture marked the detention of its top editor, Mossayeb Naeimi, and his colleagues.

Security forces also held the press adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, for an hour yesterday, the state-run Mehr news agency said. Javanfekr was sentenced this week to a year in prison and banned from engaging in media activities for three years for publishing an article in August deemed “in violation of Islamic principles,” Mehr said. He said yesterday that he will appeal the ruling.

Ahmadinejad’s opponents have accused him of challenging the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority. Iran will hold parliamentary elections in March.

Javanfekr also criticized some of Ahmadinejad’s opponents in an interview published Nov. 19 in the Etemaad newspaper, where he accused them of deserting the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution that brought Shiite Muslim clerics to power.

Khamenei has described Ahmadinejad’s government as “serviceable and hardworking,” Javanfekr said. “If certain conservative politicians don’t see it this way, they had better admit that they have a problem with the leader and don’t obey him,” the adviser was quoted as saying by Mehr.