Why they closed Shargh

The closure of Shargh newspaper could be explained best this way:

Shargh was not only the voice of the moderate reformists, but also targeting a very influential part of the reformist constituency with higher income and higher education.

So now that the Assembly of Experts' election is under way, which is basically the body that is supposed to appoint the Supreme Leader and to watch his performance.

The radical conservatives, Ahmadinejadies, have tried to stop moderate clerics from running with different techniques such as exams on their religious expertise (because they have to be Mojtaheds, or senior cleric who are allowed to issue fatwas.)

But they've also tried to cut off the reformists channels to reach their constituencies in the past few years and that has really limited their contact with the educated, urban populace.

Shargh at best had some 200,000 readers per day, but it had a significant inluence, not only in terms of its informative functions, but also in the narrow space it had created for important debates on various topics.