Iran cartoonists on tightrope during election campaign

Press cartoonists say they are dodging "moving red lines" in the run-up to a June 14 presidential election in Iran, a country where a satirical image can get a newspaper banned or an editor jailed.
There have always been no-go areas, such as caricaturing the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the military, but there has still been a certain freedom of tone during the campaign.
Two leading cartoonists, working at reformist newspapers, told AFP their job remains fraught with difficulty rawing as the restrictions have not been clearly defined.
Several others from across the political spectrum declined to be interviewed about their election coverage.

Jamal Rahmati, 40, artistic director of reformist newspaper Etemad, told AFP that, "in general, before the elections we get relative freedom, to a surprising degree. We can touch on every topic except clerics.
"Nowadays, there may be a problem with any topic because the boundaries are not clearly defined," he added.

The bodies supervising the media "require us not to put a dark interpretation on the situation in the country, but what is a dark interpretation?"
Some things are obvious, and the culture ministry, which supervises the media, warned the press in July against publishing certain reports about the impact of Western sanctions that plunged Iran into a deep crisis.

The European Union and the United States have both imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran's oil and banking sectors to punish its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and the resulting loss of hard currency receipts has sent the value of the rial into a nosedive and the inflation rate soaring.
Another sensitive issue is Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his efforts to crush a 26-month-old uprising.
And, of course, there is the election itself, in which all eight candidates received the approval of a conservative-led regime vetting body to stand.
After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected to his second term in 2009, it was widely believed that his victory was due to electoral fraud. That sparked a public outcry and massive street demonstrations that the regime crushed with deadly force.

Hadi Heidari, 33, who directs art work at the oft-banned reformist daily Shargh, echoed his colleague.
"Officially, we must work within the framework of the rights outlined in the constitution, with the exception of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the armed forces," said Heidari.