Tehran Prosecutor's Office Considers 'Job's Patience' Criminal

The Tehran Prosecutor's Office has filed a complaint against the Ham-Mihan newspaper for publishing a cartoon about Job's patience in response to the government's promise to lift internet filtering, which featured an image of 'Job the Prophet.' According to a report by the Hamshahri newspaper, affiliated with the Tehran Municipality, the complaint was filed on Thursday, October 18, due to the 'publication of a cartoon depicting Job the Prophet.' The subject of this cartoon was a reaction to a statement by Fatemeh Mohajerani, the spokesperson for the Islamic Republic government, who said, 'You must be patient to solve the problems of the internet and filtering.' In the cartoon, Job the Prophet, believed by some to be a 'symbol of patience,' has run out of patience with the promises and stands before the government spokesperson asking, 'Excuse me, hasn't this filtering been resolved?' The spokesperson replies, 'No, just a little more patience, it will be solved!' Lifting filtering and internet restrictions was one of Masoud Pezeshkian's promises during his campaign to succeed Ebrahim Raisi. However, in recent days, the head of the government responded to a question about this promise by saying, 'Given the current situation, do not talk about lifting filtering.' These remarks by Pezeshkian led to criticism from his supporters, including Abbas Abdi, who stated that if promises such as lifting filtering, improving women's rights, and foreign relations are not fulfilled, not only will there be no positive change, but 'the consensus with society will be definitively broken.' Najat Bahrami, a freelance journalist, told Voice of America that Pezeshkian's supporters, mainly reformists including Javad Zarif, were seeking to create 'achievements' by raising issues such as lifting filtering and mandatory hijab, and 'this group is to blame.' He noted that when government censorship reaches a level where media are instructed to remove 'emoji options' from their Telegram channels because people are reacting to the removal of Hezbollah, Hamas, and IRGC officials with 'laughing emojis,' in such an environment, reformists bring up lifting filtering with the aim of 'creating achievements.' The ongoing filtering and restrictions on people's access to free internet in Iran have always made headlines, and the latest report from the Organization for Defending the Flow of Free Information in Iran shows that with the official start of the fourteenth government of the Islamic Republic, the conviction of journalists has increased fivefold.