In a Middle East racked by turmoil Iranians have fallen in love with stability

[Jefferson23]

Iranians look at turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa and claim they recognise the benefits they enjoy at home now

Jonathan Steele

Last update:
Tuesday 19 May 2015

Saeed Leylaz points to the small coffee table in front of the sofas where we are sitting in his living-room. “Imagine another table of the same size and put the two together. They just about cover the area of the cell where I was held”, he says with a rueful smile.

I make a mental calculation. His coffee table is about one and a quarter metres square. Double that in your head and you cannot help wincing at what it must have meant to be locked up in the resulting space for a few hours, let alone the four months that Leylaz spent in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin prison. He spent another eight months with other detainees.

They were among dozens of intellectuals, journalists, economists, activists and former government officials who were rounded up after protesters took to the streets against Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s re-election as president in 2009. Leylaz is an economic journalist who founded and edited the newspaper Sarmayeh. It was closed and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted of working to overthrow the government and keeping contact with foreigners. The sentence was twice reduced and he eventually came out after serving a year.

snip* It is also a sign of the liberalisation that has come about since Hassan Rouhani succeeded Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as Iran’s president in 2013. Though the TV channels ignore Leylaz, he is regularly interviewed by Iran’s print media.

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