Washington Post:

A long-smoldering battle over government control of media and culture in Iran is heating up, as opposing political forces fight over where the limits should be drawn on access to information.

President Hassan Rouhani and his supporters say that press restrictions should be reduced and that the public should be trusted with greater access to the Internet and television.

Hard-line conservatives, meanwhile, argue that such freedom would undermine Iran’s Islamic rule.

The debate intensified last week when Ali Jannati, the minister of culture and Islamic guidance under Rouhani, described as “ridiculous” many of the policies that Iran has adopted since the 1979 Islamic revolution to control the flow of information, including Internet filtering.

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