Why was Abbas Salehi Reappointed as Minister of Culture?

Abbas Salehi, who was given the nickname "the cleric in a suit" during his tenure as Minister under Hassan Rouhani, had written to the Ministerial Selection Committee less than three weeks ago stating, "Please accept my definite excuse" and emphasized that he had "various reasons for the committee's information" for not accepting this position. In the meantime, no details about Salehi's "reasons" were published, nor was there any information about Masoud Pezeshkian's arguments to persuade him. However, given Salehi's previous activities in the Ministry of Culture and his reputation as a "moderate principlist" while remaining loyal to the Supreme Leader, it can be predicted that he will be one of the "least problematic" ministers proposed for gaining the parliament's vote of confidence. In the Islamic Republic, Abbas Salehi is the only person who is introduced as Minister of Culture in two alternating governments, providing an opportunity for both his opponents and supporters in parliament to compare his previous performance in this ministry, which the Supreme Leader has always specifically focused on, as evidenced by his own statements. Meanwhile, those involved in publishing, especially authors and translators in the country who, due to censorship, must deal with the Book Administration of this ministry for the publication of any work and even for the reprinting of any book, stand on the other side of the issue; a community that included a wide and diverse range of them who supported Hassan Rouhani in the 2013 presidential election in the hope that the increasingly closed atmosphere of the Ministry of Culture during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two governments would at least be somewhat opened. Reviewing the process that led to Abbas Salehi becoming Minister in Rouhani's government and taking a glance at his performance alongside the views of some authors and activists in the book sector can shed light on the future landscape in this area, even if to some extent. How did Salehi become Minister of Culture in Rouhani's government? The first Minister of Culture in Hassan Rouhani's government was Ali Jannati, who, upon taking office, criticized the "method" of book censorship and not self-censorship, stating that the working process in the ministry was such that "if the Quran was not divine revelation, it would definitely be rejected." He even confirmed for the first time the existence of several "blacklists" of publishers, authors, and translators during Ahmadinejad's government and made efforts to lift the bans on some works, especially to provide executive support for publishers. However, his ministry, under pressure from the opposing political spectrum in parliament and some governmental institutions and media, became a short-lived government and was forced to resign after about three years. After that, Reza Salehi Amiri, who had a background in security work, replaced Ali Jannati and tried to continue Jannati's work, albeit with less turbulence. However, a year later, when Rouhani became president again, Salehi Amiri wrote a letter to the then head of state television, requesting the broadcast of "Robbena" by Mohammad Reza Shajarian on television; a religious supplication sung that had been broadcast for many years during the nights of Ramadan but was banned after Shajarian supported the 2009 election protesters. This letter is significant because Ali Khamenei not only reacted negatively to it but also described it as an example of the "disruption and shutdown" of the Ministry of Culture as the "central apparatus of thought and culture" and expressed his opposition to the current process in this ministry by stating: "Sometimes one feels that the central apparatuses of thought, culture, politics, and the like are disrupted, are shut down. We have so many cultural issues in the country... but suddenly whether a certain song is broadcast before iftar or not becomes the main issue; they write letters... When the central apparatuses are disrupted like this, then this is where the same fire of self-initiative is needed." It seems that it was to resolve this "disruption" that Rouhani was ultimately compelled to turn to Abbas Salehi and introduce him as Minister of Culture; someone whom Khamenei later referred to as a person "with brilliant scientific, revolutionary, and responsible backgrounds in the Islamic Republic" when appointing him as the head of the "Information" institution and newspaper. Abbas Salehi was 14 years old in 1979, the year of the revolution, and although his brother was killed in the Iran-Iraq war, there is no evidence of his presence in that war. However, his biography states that his religious studies began in the 1970s in Mashhad and then in the 1980s in Qom, linking him even to the magazine "Hawzah" in the capacity of editor-in-chief. Salehi became the head of the Islamic Propagation Office of Khorasan in the early 1990s and has been a member of the board of directors and board of trustees of the Islamic Propagation Office of Qom since 1997 by order of Ali Khamenei. Membership in the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution and the Public Culture Council, both of which are appointed institutions, are also among Abbas Salehi's other backgrounds; until Rouhani's first government, when Ali Jannati, the then Minister of Culture, appointed him as the cultural deputy of this ministry. In August 2019, a billion-dollar contract was made for the censorship of 13 million pages of books. What changes occurred in the book sector during Salehi's ministry? If the issue of "censorship" or, as the Islamic Republic refers to it, "supervision" of books is considered the biggest problem for authors, translators, and publishers on one side and for the reading public on the other, contrary to Hassan Rouhani's previous promises in this regard, the biggest achievement of the Ministry of Culture at the end of Abbas Salehi's ministry was the acceleration and organization of the censorship process. Mr. A. Sh. a well-known writer inside the country who wishes to remain anonymous, told Radio Farda: "Under Ahmadinejad's government, censorship intensified, and the uncertainty for authors and publishers increased. During Hassan Rouhani's government, and specifically under Abbas Salehi, no improvement occurred regarding censorship; the only significant change was that the Book Administration was obliged to sometimes relieve authors and publishers who had been waiting for years for permission from uncertainty and to provide them with the amendments needed for censorship more quickly or to announce that their work was not publishable or was banned." Conversely, there were publishers whose level of dissatisfaction with Salehi's performance was not as high, but their relative satisfaction was more related to some executive decisions such as delegating the book fair's affairs to the publishers' guild and the method of distributing subsidies. These supportive publishers also, at the same time, found their only satisfaction regarding censorship to be the "reduction in the time for issuing book permits," or as Ms. M. N. a translator and publishing expert in Iran, told Radio Farda: "Mr. Salehi tried to socialize with publishers and keep the publishing atmosphere seemingly calm through dialogue and some executive decisions; otherwise, during his tenure, the only event regarding book censorship was that publishers and authors were relieved from previous uncertainty and received their responses to their requests for permission or amendments more quickly and regularly." Mr. A. Sh., a writer who has been dealing with the Book Administration of the Ministry of Culture across various governments since the 1990s, adds that if authors previously had to self-censor to obtain publication permits, now for years they have had no hope of obtaining permits for some of their works and essentially refrain from submitting them for review. This situation has not only severely harmed the literary creation process but has also halted or disrupted the publication of valuable works in other fields. For the first time, during Hassan Rouhani's government, when Abbas Salehi was introduced as Minister of Culture, one critic wrote about him, "Days of elimination, silence, passivity, and retreat for the people of art, thought, and media, of course, with a touch of ethics and decorum." Abbas Salehi is known in the political landscape of the country as a "moderate in politics and pleasant in interactions" who has "Khamenei's trust." On the other hand, he himself once acknowledged that one of the problems of the Ministry of Culture is that "the powers are limited but accountability is almost unlimited." The result is that during his previous tenure in the Ministry of Culture, at least regarding the review and censorship of books, neither the limitations of these powers were reduced nor was there any effort to decrease the interference of other governmental institutions, including the leadership office and security agencies, in the book sector. Khamenei, during a visit to the Tehran Book Fair in 2019, warned Abbas Salehi about the existence of a book in a booth, stating, "These are your responsibility." On the same day, he also emphasized that "one should not be influenced by certain atmospheres. You are the agents of Islam and the Islamic Republic. Do not hesitate. If a book harms its readers and audience, it must be stopped." In 2017, Hassan Rouhani introduced Abbas Salehi, "Khamenei's trusted man," to resolve the "disruption" in the revolutionary nature of the Ministry of Culture. It seems that Masoud Pezeshkian, by introducing Salehi for the Ministry of Culture, also sought to take the safest route to ensure Khamenei's satisfaction, especially in the book sector. The opinions of the authors in the notes do not necessarily reflect the views of Radio Farda.