This is the new Iran.But the old is not far away and Mr Jalaei Pour’s story is not only instructive; it is a symbol of President Khatami’s coming of age, the dangers as well as the excitement of an election that appears to have changed Iran for ever. “When I tried to open a newspaper, the Minister of Islamic Guidance told me: ‘We already have 11 papers in this country and it’s enough. Get out of this building!’”Then the new minister delivered 100 licences He was a brave man.” So is Mr Jalaei Pour At 21 he was governor of the town of Mahabad Three of his brothers were killed in the Iran-Iraq war. “When I opened Jameeh, we acquired a very important audience – highly educated students, professors, engineers, and suddenly the conservatives realised our paper was becoming important.”His sin was to publish, in its 145th edition, a photograph of five men jogging in a park. “They accused us of being unIslamic and claimed that the men were dancing which is forbidden in the Koran. We immediately launched Tous under a new licence from a friend. We managed to publish 45 editions before we were closed again.”I arrived at the office to find some men from the police linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

They arrested me, blindfolded me and put me in isolation in Evin prison.”All this was under the presidency of a man whom Mr Jalaei Pour’s newspaper fully supported: Mohamed Khatami. “It was thanks to his election last year that conditions in prison were not so bad There was no torture, the food was OK. But I was interrogated by Said Emami who asked me about the paper; he wanted to know if we were controlled by ‘Zionist agents’. They had gone through all our software but couldn’t find any evidence against us.”His mother denounced her son’s imprisonment in another paper, Hamishmah, and after she met Ayatollah Khamenei, the editor was released.But for weeks, he feared that – like other intellectuals and writers – he would be assassinated. “I spent 20 nights at my sister’s home or with family and friends.” So Friday’s election was, in some ways like a new life.Exit polls at voting booths suggested that President Khatami may have a majority for his reform programme which no one could have imagined.

“An epic day,” Asre Azandegan called it yesterday morning – a headline that is probably not an exaggeration. “The size of the turnout was greater even than for the presidential election [of Khatami] last year, it is a great surprise,” Mr Jalaei Pour says. “Because for three years the conservatives tried to make difficulties with the Khatami pro- gramme Despite the bad economy, the voters turned out. The reformists could have an absolute majority.”But who are the “reformists”? It’s almost impossible to find anyone here who claims to be a conservative Even Rafsanjani ran on a “reformist” ticket.