Tehran wages broad crackdown on dissenters

Two years after Ahmadinejad's election, the "Tehran Spring" of his moderate predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, is a fading memory. A deep chill has settled over those pushing for change inside the Islamic Republic.

Some dissenters attribute the crackdown to the regime's fear of a US effort to undermine it as tensions over Iran's nuclear program intensify. Others say the intent is simply to contain discontent fueled by a faltering economy.

Teachers, feminists, union leaders, journalists, students, and at least four Iranian-Americans have been arrested over roughly the past six months.

Most have been freed after spending days, week, or months behind bars. But many of their cases remain open in Iran's revolutionary courts, a parallel justice system that operates with few of the protections available in civilian courts, lawyers and activists said.

"The new government has increased pressures on the nation -- students, laborers, intellectuals," said Ebrahim Yazdi, foreign minister after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution and now leader of the banned but tolerated Freedom Movement of Iran.

"When laborers stage protest rallies, the government, instead of talking to them, takes them to jail. Women are jailed just for collecting signatures in support of women's rights," he said.

Restrictions in Iran are far from absolute. Iranians criticize the government in public and ignore a wide array of social regulations at home. Defenders of the system counter that it is more open than in many nations in the region, including some of America's allies.

Iranian officials say the judiciary is simply prosecuting crimes. "Thank God, in Iran the rule of law prevails and the judiciary of the Islamic Republic is an independent branch," Ahmadinejad said at a news conference.

But the crackdown goes beyond the justice system. Books are more closely censored these days, and newspaper editors are being told how to cover issues ranging from nuclear negotiations to crime control.

"This is completely new, " said Mashaallah Shamsolvaezin, head of Iran's Association for Defense of Freedom of the Press.