Ali Jannati set to be next Iranian minister of culture and guidance

Although Ali Jannati, the man in line to be Iran's next minister of Islamic culture and guidance, has spent roughly two decades as a diplomat, some questions still stump him.

"Your last name makes me worry a bit," a journalist from the reformist newspaper Bahar said to him recently. That's because his last name is that of one of Iran's most radical hardline clerics.

Ali Jannati is the son of Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, for 21 years the head of the Guardian Council, the body that has disqualified thousands of candidates from participation in presidential, parliamentary, and local elections.

Ayatollah Jannati has often been criticised for his extreme views. In August 2010, before he was placed under house arrest, Green Movement leader Mousavi protested the execution of two political prisoners and the ayatollah's outspoken support of the sentence.

"The tragedy currently taking place in our prisons is the result of the mindset of people like Jannati and his ilk," Mousavi said at the time. "Their behaviours and attitudes display all the hallmarks of brutal authoritarianism."

In May, the Guardian Council disqualified Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani – head of the Expediency Council and a former president – from the presidential campaign. It was in this context that the Bahar reporter made his remark.

"Those who know me and know my work background would never make the mistake of thinking that issues of belief are somehow genetic," Ali Jannati replied. "It's not as though I have inherited my beliefs and attitudes from my father's DNA."

Jannati's résumé backs up that assertion. In contrast with his father, he maintains a close personal relationship with Rafsanjani and is considered an integral member of his camp. In 1988, when Rafsanjani was speaker of the Majles, Jannati oversaw his administrative affairs.

During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first term as president, Jannati acted as the interior minister's political deputy, but his close relationship with Rafsanjani eventually led to his ousting, and he returned to his former job as a diplomat in Kuwait.

With his name now linked to one of the most politically complicated positions in post-revolutionary Iran, with great influence over the media and arts, he is once again in the limelight. In particular, journalists, who suffered grievously from official suppression over the past eight years, hold out the hope that he can ease the many restrictions on their freedom to report the news.

"I think it'll be more like Khatami's second presidency, 2001 – 2005, rather than the golden age of his first," said Marjan, a 33-year-old bank employee in Tehran. She was 17 at the beginning of that "golden age," when the reformist president Mohammad Khatami appointed Ataollah Mohajerani to the top post at the ministry of Islamic culture and guidance. "My father would buy three newspapers a day," she said.

During the Mohajerani period, the judiciary did not hesitate to shut down media outlets it found politically objectionable, but the ministry made it easy for journalists to secure permits to reopen their old newspapers or start brand new ones.

Many prominent figures in Iranian cinema, such as Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, and Ebrahim Hatamikia, enjoyed periods of prolific output, and theatres bustled with excited filmgoers. For the first time since shortly after the 1979 revolution, singers received permits to make pop music albums. In publishing, censorship loosened and in some fields even ceased altogether, and countless translations of foreign books were released.

The same policies that made Mohajerani a beloved figure among Iran's youth and middle classes, swept up in the popular wave of reformism, also made him persona non grata in the eyes of the ideological conservatives and religious fundamentalists who dominate the establishment.

He barely survived a vote of confidence in the fifth Majles and his credentials were constantly challenged by Guardian Council members. On one occasion, at the end of Friday Prayers in Tehran, one of his fingers was broken when he and and leading reformist Abdollah Nouri were physically attacked by ideological adversaries. Under relentless pressure, he resigned as minister in April 2000.

If Mohajerani instituted a golden age, then the two men Ahmadinejad picked to fill the office Mohajerani once held – Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi, followed by Mohammad Hosseini – oversaw the "dark ages" in the eyes of many.

Journalists unwilling to toe the government line were already subject to heightened censorship during Ahmadinejad's first term, but after the postelection unrest in 2009, the Islamic culture and guidance ministry brought much progressive journalism in Iran to a grinding halt and placed draconian restrictions on those allowed to continue in the trade.

However, the articles appearing in the reformist press over the past two months already indicate some loosening of the reins. In an interview last week with the Ghanoon newspaper, Ali Jannati insisted that he had not conferred with his father regarding his current nomination.

"I haven't been in touch with the Islamic culture and guidance ministry in the past few years, but based on what I've been hearing from my friends in the arts and in journalism, they've been giving most everyone quite a hard time," he said.

"People in all fields have been struggling. Our friends in cinema, literature, music, and the press have all been dealing with the same issues. I imagine that ultimately, this new government will have to make changes at a very basic level."

"If we approach the situation with an open mind and treat media as a kind of 'fourth estate' that exists to make our institutions more democratic, we can work together towards more government transparency."

According to the editor-in-chief of a prominent reformist newspaper, who requested anonymity, the culture minister can make a major difference in reinvigorating the Iranian press. "I can't stress enough the importance of the role of the culture and guidance ministry," said the editor.

"They are the only ones responsible for issuing permits to press outlets. There is a kind of supervising committee under the remit of this ministry that can theoretically prevent the closure of news outlets, and its view of journalists differs. During Ahmadinejad's presidency, the ministry was more like a government prosecutor trying to bring down all the critical outlets."

The editor said he thought Ali Jannati was a capable official. "He's a diplomat who has travelled around and seen the world. He has an open mind. He's gained a reputation for himself; he doesn't really need to gain the trust of others as he's already proven himself to many different political groups."

Ali Akbar Mahdi, a sociology professor at Ohio Wesleyan University who follows Iranian politics closely, said Ali Jannati "has had some role in all of the preceding administrations and has never been one to simply toe the line of a particular group".

He added: A"t the same time, he is a fundamentalist, and his standards in terms of execution and selection of staff indicate that he favours hardworking, competent people who, at the same time, are firm believers in Velayaat-e Faghih" – the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, the doctrine by which Ayatollah Khamenei rules.