About Yas-e No

Yas-e No

Yas-e No was a Persian-language reformist daily newspaper published in Tehran, Iran. Its name, written in Persian as Yas-e No, was translated as New Jasmine or New Yasmine. The paper was launched in March 2002 and was in circulation, with long interruptions caused by official bans, until 2009. Throughout its life it was regarded as the unofficial outlet, and was often described as the mouthpiece, of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the leading reformist political party of the period and the main opposition party associated with the reform movement that had brought President Mohammad Khatami to office. The paper was published during a period in which Iran's reformist press faced repeated closures by the judiciary, and its own history was defined by two bans, a five-year legal battle and a final return to the newsstands that lasted, in its last phase, for a single published issue before it was stopped again.

Founding and identity

Yas-e No was founded in March 2002 in Tehran. It appeared as a daily newspaper written in Persian and aligned with reformism in Iranian politics. Its defining institutional connection was to the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the reformist party whose members included senior figures of the Khatami era. Reference accounts described the relationship as unofficial: the paper was not formally the party's organ, but it functioned as the party's outlet and was recognised by press-freedom organisations as the Participation Front's mouthpiece. The paper was also described as close to former president Mohammad Khatami personally. Its editor during the final phase of its legal battle was Mohammad Naimipour, who was fined by a Tehran court in February 2009 at the conclusion of the case arising from its first closure. The paper's headquarters were in Tehran, and it formed part of a small group of high-profile reformist dailies, alongside titles such as Sharq, that carried the reform movement's arguments to a national readership in the early 2000s.

The reformist press setting

The paper was launched late in the reformist press opening that followed Khatami's election in 1997. During Khatami's presidency, which lasted from 1997 to 2005, reformist newspapers became a central arena of Iranian politics, publishing debates about the constitution, the powers of unelected institutions and the direction of the Islamic Republic. The conservative-dominated judiciary responded with a sustained campaign of closures, and scores of reformist titles were closed during those years. Yas-e No was created within that environment and inherited its risks: its stock in trade was political reporting and commentary sympathetic to the reformist members of parliament and to the Participation Front, at a time when criticising the Supreme Leader was a criminal offence and when the Tehran prosecutor's office, under prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, was the chief instrument used against reformist publications. The paper's short first life, from March 2002 to February 2004, coincided with the final phase of the reformists' hold on parliament, and its fate was tied directly to the confrontation between the outgoing reformist parliament and the conservative institutions that were displacing it.

Editorial voice before the first ban

Surviving examples of the paper's journalism showed a daily willing to publish material that challenged official positions. In June 2003 the paper reported the findings of a poll conducted by the Expediency Council which found that a reported 45 percent of respondents wanted changes in the political system even if this came about through foreign intervention, while 26 percent wanted managerial changes to improve the system's performance, 16 percent wanted political reform and more power for reformists, and 13 percent wanted current policies to continue. The paper pointedly asked why the Expediency Council could conduct a poll with such controversial findings while other institutions were punished, a reference to an earlier opinion poll in which 74.7 percent of Tehran residents had favoured negotiations with the United States. In January 2004, as reformist deputies staged a sit-in in the Majlis to protest the disqualification of candidates from the coming parliamentary election, the paper published an unsigned editorial on 12 January 2004 arguing that the Guardian Council's ban itself undermined the republican aspects of the constitution, and turning against the conservatives their own charge that the reformists were attempting a silent overthrow. The editorial insisted that the reformers, by emphasising the law, were working only to revive a neglected aspect of the political system.

The February 2004 closure

The paper was closed in February 2004 in the immediate run-up to the parliamentary elections of 20 February. The Guardian Council had barred a large number of reformist candidates from standing, including many sitting deputies, and reformist members of the outgoing parliament had protested with a sit-in and with resignations. On 18 February 2004 Yas-e No and Sharq published extracts of an open letter from reformist parliamentarians to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which the deputies blamed him for what they called an electoral coup d'état, namely the ban on many pro-reform candidates. The letter had been read to journalists by Mohsen Armin, one of the organisers of the MPs' sit-in criticising the vetting of candidates by the Council of Guardians. That evening officials from the Tehran Prosecutor's Office raided and closed both newspapers. Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi announced that he had ordered the ban because of a request by the Supreme National Security Council. That justification was publicly disputed: Hassan Rouhani, then the council's chairman, and President Mohammad Khatami denied the assertion on 20 and 23 February respectively, saying that the matter had not even been discussed at the council's meeting. Reporters Without Borders demanded the immediate reopening of both dailies, condemning the efforts of the prosecutor's office to silence the reformist press and deprive Iranians of major news sources on the eve of the legislative elections, and noted that 113 journalists from the reformist press issued a joint statement saying they would not vote in elections they considered neither free nor legal. The Committee to Protect Journalists likewise condemned the suspensions, describing them as clearly aimed at stifling public debate ahead of the elections, and demanded that both papers be allowed to reopen immediately. The court orders were described as temporary, although press-freedom observers noted that most Iranian newspapers temporarily banned by the Press Court had not reopened.

Its journalists and the successor paper

The closure did not immediately disperse the paper's journalists. After many Yas-e No journalists began writing for the reformist daily Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh, that newspaper too was suspended, in July 2004, along with the daily Jomhouriat and the monthly Aftab. Reporters Without Borders noted at the time that Vaghayeh Ettefaghieh was largely staffed by journalists from Yas-e No, which had been suspended on 18 February, and that it had sharply criticised conservative hardliners and the new parliament, which was dominated by their supporters. The episode illustrated a recurring pattern of the period, in which the staff of a closed reformist title regrouped under a new name and the authorities moved against the successor in turn. The suspensions prompted a sit-in by more than 250 people outside the Association of Iranian Journalists in Tehran, as well as a one-day hunger strike by many journalists in August 2004. Yas-e No itself, however, remained closed while its appeal against the closure order worked its way through the courts.

The five-year legal battle

The paper appealed against the 2004 closure order, beginning a legal wrangle that lasted five years. The case ended in February 2009, when a Tehran court imposed a fine of 100,000 toman, reported as approximately 150 euros, on the newspaper's editor, Mohammad Naimipour. The modest fine cleared the way, in legal terms, for the paper to publish again. The decision authorising the relaunch had been taken a few months before the paper's return, according to the deputy culture minister's later account of the dispute that followed. The length of the process meant that the paper had been absent from the newsstands for the whole of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first presidential term, a period in which, press-freedom monitors recorded, the government itself, and not only the judiciary, had become the independent media's principal adversary. By the time the legal obstacle was removed, a new presidential election was approaching, and the paper's proprietors prepared to return it to print in support of the reformist-backed candidate.

The single-issue return of May 2009

After its five-year legal battle, the paper published its first issue since 2004 on 16 May 2009. The issue openly supported Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate backed by the Participation Front, in the election due on 12 June 2009, in which former president Khatami was backing the moderate former prime minister Mousavi against the hardline incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The return lasted one day. Publication was stopped in response to a request from Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, whose complaint six years earlier had led to the original closure. Deputy Culture Minister Ali Reza Malekian explained that Mortazavi had written on the Saturday of the relaunch saying that he was one of the main complainants against the newspaper six years before and that the judge's decision authorising the relaunch had not been communicated to him so that he could appeal. Mortazavi filed an appeal, and publication was stopped at his request, on the orders of the Commission for Press Authorisation and Surveillance, an offshoot of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Reporters Without Borders condemned the closure of the paper immediately after it brought out its first issue in five years, and called for its immediate reopening, saying that with a month to go to the presidential election it was vital that all political parties have equal and fair use of newspapers and broadcast stations to relay their views. Mousavi himself brought out the first issue of his own newspaper, Kalameh Sabz, on 18 May 2009.

Final ban in June 2009

Reference accounts recorded that, following the presidential election, the paper was banned again on 11 June 2009, the eve of the 12 June vote whose disputed outcome produced the largest protests in Iran since the 1979 revolution. That date was recorded as the date on which the paper ceased publication. The discrepancy between the May stoppage and the June date reflected the paper's confused final weeks: it had been prevented from publishing the day after its single May issue, and the formal ban recorded against it fell in June, as the election crisis broke. No further return was reported. The paper's end came as part of the wider suppression of reformist and opposition media that accompanied the 2009 election and its aftermath, in which the Participation Front itself was driven out of legal politics and its allied newspapers were closed one after another.

Place in Iranian press history

Yas-e No was remembered in press-freedom reporting principally as a test case of the methods used against Iran's reformist press. Its first closure showed how a prosecutor's order, justified by a claimed national-security request that the president and the security council's own chairman publicly disowned, could remove a leading daily on the eve of an election. Its five-year appeal showed how temporary suspensions became long absences in practice. Its one-day resurrection in May 2009, ended by the same prosecutor's procedural objection that he had not been notified of the court decision he wished to appeal, was cited by Reporters Without Borders as evidence that opposition parties could not obtain fair access to the press in an election period. As the Participation Front's unofficial daily during the last years in which that party operated openly, the paper documented, both in its reporting and in its own treatment by the authorities, the closing of the reform era in Iranian politics.