Kayhan (کیهان) is an Iranian daily newspaper headquartered in Tehran whose managing editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, is the personal appointee of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The publication is funded through the Office of the Supreme Leader and treated as one of Khamenei's public voices in print.
Daily print newspaper with Persian-language web edition. Editorial direction is set by Shariatmadari, who was placed in the role by Khamenei after the original Kayhan publishing group was confiscated from its pre-revolutionary owners. The opinion column is the centre of gravity. Over decades, Kayhan editorials have demanded the prosecution and in several cases the killing of named regime critics, including 2009 Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, former foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif, dissident journalists, and exiled opposition figures. Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have documented this pattern across multiple decades.
Kayhan is the page where Khamenei lets the parts of his political instinct that cannot fit into a Friday sermon get written down. Shariatmadari does not improvise. He has been in the chair since 1993 because the Office of the Supreme Leader keeps him there. When Kayhan calls for someone to be hanged, it is the regime testing the temperature of that call in public. When Kayhan threatens EU naval forces, it is the regime making the threat through a thinly deniable proxy. The honest framing is that Kayhan's editorial is the Supreme Leader's office speaking on the record while keeping its formal hands clean.
Because no other Iranian newspaper has been used as openly and continuously as a vehicle for state incitement against named individuals. Naming Kayhan, and Shariatmadari, is part of the documentation of how the regime communicates threats in print.
What it is
کیهان (Kayhan) is an Iranian daily newspaper whose managing editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, is the personal appointee of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and widely treated as one of Khamenei’s public voices in print. The newspaper itself is funded through the Office of the Supreme Leader. Shariatmadari has used Kayhan’s editorial page to call for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, to threaten EU forces in the region following the European Parliament’s January 2023 vote to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, and over decades to demand the prosecution and execution of named regime critics including Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, and journalists working for foreign Persian-language outlets. Multiple Iranian and international rights monitors have documented Kayhan editorials calling for the death of named individuals.
Sources
- Iran International: Kayhan threatens EU forces over IRGC designation (20 January 2023)
- Iran International: Kayhan urges Strait of Hormuz closure (16 October 2024)
- Committee to Protect Journalists: Hossein Shariatmadari and press-freedom record
- Amnesty International: Kayhan incitement against Mousavi and Karroubi (June 2009)
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