TEHRAN, Iran — During the past two decades, the Kayhan newspaper has been functioning as the unofficial tribune of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Its editor-in-chief, hard-line ideologue Hossein Shariatmadari, 68, is a major media personality. First appointed as the representative of the supreme leader at Kayhan in January 1993, he is notorious for his radical anti-Reformist stance in the late 1990s, harsh campaigning against the Green Movement in 2009 and unforgiving criticism of the nuclear negotiators since 2013.
Over the past two months, however, there have been clear indications that the supreme leader and senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials are no longer interested in seeing Shariatmadari attributing his own radical views to Khamenei.
