Jon Stewart and Iran

Economist.com

IRAN is not the first topic that springs to mind in relation to Jon Stewart. The American host of "The Daily Show" pokes fun at politicians four nights a week. But in "Rosewater", his film debut that is due to be released in America in November, Mr Stewart tackles a subject few would expect to laugh about—the jailing and torture of a journalist in Tehran.

Maziar Bahari, a Iranian-Canadian, was working for Newsweek magazine when he was detained for covering the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009. The country's clerical rulers say the protests in the poll’s aftermath were an attempt at sedition led by America and Israel. Hundreds of activists remain in jail. Based on Mr Bahari's book, “Then They Came For Me”, the film recounts his 118-day incarceration in Tehran's Evin Prison, where those deemed enemies of the state are held.

Iran's conservatives hate being reminded of the 2009 protests. The country’s conservative media—on the basis of the film's the two-minute trailer—have deemed "Rosewater" a Zionist-funded, biased, anti-Iranian flop. “Full of distortion and lies,” is how one state-owned news outlet described it. They may be especially sensitive since there is currently a parallel to Mr Bahari's jailing which no local newspaper is likely to mention. Iran is holding without charge Jazon Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post correspondent in Iran, along with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who works for the National, an English-language newspaper in the Gulf. They have not been seen or heard of since their home in Tehran was raided on July 22nd.

Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was judged to have won that contentious election in 2009, was renowned for his repression of the press, but people hoped for better under his successor, the self-declared moderate Hassan Rohani, who took office last year. But Mr Rohani has been mute on the subject. At a press conference on August 30th he ducked a question from a journalist who suggested that every time Mr Rohani moves Iran one step forward, someone forces it back. The reporters’ detentions have been interpreted as an attempt by darker forces within the state to damage Mr Rohani’s image as a reformer, including the conservative-dominated judiciary and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, whose intelligence wing is thought to be holding Mr Rezaian and Ms Salehi.

Officials from Ershad, Iran's ministry of culture, which represents foreign journalists, succeeded in freeing two photographers arrested at the same time as the reporters. However, there are worrying reports in Iranian media trying to frame Mr Rezaian as a spy. Vatan-e-Emrooz, a conservative newspaper with ties to the Revolutionary Guard, suggested on August 6th that Mr Rezaian was a longstanding “agent” for the National Iranian-American Council, a Washington DC-based lobby group that many in Tehran consider an American mouthpiece. Many fear that Mr Rezaian will be forced to confess to espionage, just as Mr Bahari was forced to in 2009, an act that led to his release. Reviews of "Rosewater", which was filmed in Jordan and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th, say Mr Stewart somehow finds humour in the darkness of Mr Bahari's case. There is none in that of Mr Rezaian and Ms Salehi.