Smash hit

For good measure, he told a press conference on Friday: “Iran’s support of terrorist organisations, I think, is something that has to cease.”

Iran’s foreign ministry described as “unacceptable” Mr Obama’s unproven assertion that Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear programme is aimed solely to generate electricity so that it can export more oil and gas.

At a press conference in Tehran today, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman affected official disinterest in the outcome of the American presidential elections. “We should not expect much change or development in the strategic fundamentals of US foreign policy,” Hassan Qashqavi said.

Shahrvand’s closure will help mute Mr Ahmadinejad’s domestic critics. He has received important backing to crack down on unsupportive media from Iran’s all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who spoke out last week after parliament impeached the president’s interior minister, Ali Kordan.

The press had ridiculed the minister, who was forced into admitting that his much-vaunted Oxford degree was bogus. Mr Ahmadinejad had stood by Mr Kordan as the scandal intensified, but Ayatollah Khamenei declared: “This careless atmosphere of talking against the government is not easily forgiven by God.”

Nevertheless, parliament, which is led by Ali Larijani, one of the President’s key conservative rivals, made another veiled jibe against Mr Ahmadinejad’s support for Mr Kordan this weekend when it tightened the rules for people hoping to contest next June’s elections. A new stipulation requires candidates to hold the equivalent of a master’s degree from a university or seminary: it went without saying that such qualifications must not be forgeries.

Iranian media, including newspapers, news websites and agencies of all political persuasions, have been hit by a string of closures since Mr Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. But many newspapers remained relatively outspoken, provided they were affiliated to various factions within the fractious regime. Journalists critical of the system as a whole tend to blog, often anonymously.

Shahrvand had carried material that would have spoiled Mr Ahmadinejad’s Saturday breakfast on many occasions. Since hitting the stands in March 2007, it featured articles by economists critical of his policies and carried the memoirs of one of his bitter rivals, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a still highly influential former president.

Many banned newspapers have promptly re-surfaced under different guises. Sharvand was launched by the directors of a leading reformist daily, Shargh, which was shut down in August 2006 after it carried an interview with an Iranian poet resident in Canada. Her “crime” in the regime’s eyes, was more serious than Mr Kordan’s forged degree: she was accused of being a lesbian.

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