The Iranian government has decided to censor TV and movie theatres, whilst amid contradictory statements, there are reports about an attack against the presidential motorcade in the province of Sistan and Balochistan.

Tehran (Asianews/Agencies) – Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a decree that was announced yesterday banning all Western music that does not conform to Islamic doctrines and the spirit of the Islamic Revolution. Television stations will only be allowed to broadcast relaxing and memorable revolutionary music.

Censorship will also apply to the country's movie theatres.  A few weeks ago the government had already approved a decree banning western movies for spreading a culture that corrupts the minds of young Iranians.

Such steps are a throwback to the times of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—the father of the Islamic Revolution—whose ideological line based on iconoclastic Quranic principles was used to ban Western and traditional culture and products seen as a threat to the moral integrity of younger generations.

Meanwhile, Iranian daily Jomhouri Islami reported that President Ahmadinejad's motorcade was attacked on December 14 in south-eastern province of Sistan and Balochistan, one of the least developed areas of the country and home to intense smuggling and drug trafficking from Afghanistan.

According to the paper, the attack took place on the Zabol-Saravan highway. A presidential security guard and a motorcade driver were killed in the attack.

In Tehran yesterday, contradictory statements were released about the incident. Officials claimed that Ahmadinejad was not present at the time of the attack since he was delivering a speech in the city of Zahedan, some 250 kilometres away. The attack was not an assassination attempt against the president but a strike by "bandits" against a security detail of the presidential guard checking out the road on which the president was supposed to travel.

Whatever the case may be, dissatisfaction with the president is growing amongst moderate Islamic religious leaders, who are critical of the obscurantist shift he has imposed on the country.

Former president, reformist Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami, and Ayatollah Ioussef Saanei have recently stated that they will do everything possible to inform the population how arch conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is politically using a distorted view of Islam and popular superstition for his own ends.

• iran
• sistan
• balochistan
• mahmoud
• ahmadinejad
• cultural
• repression
• western
• music
• movies
• assassination
• attempt