Introduce yourself for our readers please?

I am Siamak Rahmani. I am a sports news editor. I started from 1997 with sports reporting for newspapers and then Tamashagaran Weekly. Now I am working as the head of sports services for Hamshahry newspaper. Tamashagaran was a successful magazine: it was avant-garde in some sense; it was a pioneer of sort.

What was women’s sports’ place in Tamashagaran?

We had our own special way of looking at women’s sports. Of course our coverage was limited; we couldn’t work much on it. Every Photograph or image of women in any magazine could cause us some problems. So we focused on the social and psychological effects of womens’ sports on our society. we would question the limits: why women cannot be active in all athletic fields? Or why can’t they be present in football stadiums and watch the games.

You should know that we tried to distinguish our questions from those of Feminist groups. I believe some of the slogans that the feminist activists used did not help women s’ sports. I believe in negotiation, so we can push the limits away. Our magazine focused on the low budget for women ’s sports vs. the many pretentious slogans. You should know that there were times when they let women in the stadium but then they did not took the advantage: they started protesting and that caused many attention. Then the Islamic clergies entered to the discussion and band women from entering.

The issue of women entering the stadiums is graver today, how do you see its future?

Look, more than %90 of the sports money is coming from the government, thus the government has the total authority over sports policies in Iran. So nothing can change unless someone in the government agrees with it. So all of the weak points as well as the good policies in Iran’s sports fall on Iran’s government.

The most important change is to privatize the sports in Iran. The pressure that FIFA and the Asian Football Federation are forcing on Iran is about the same matter: they want Iran to give more power to its private athletic clubs. Iran has to these; otherwise it will be band from everything.

Why the reports don’t follow these issues?

Of course they do, their hands are tight both by the government and by our readers: A sports column or magazine reader is more interested in reading about gossips and the actual events rather than the sports policies and its problems. So there are fewer reports on these issues.

Sometimes in some publications such as Keyhan and Resalat (Publications related to the government) articles get published that if other publications work on it there will be problems. Is this the same for women’s Sports? What are your limitations and red lines?

Actually there is not much difference: These governmental publications have an ideological point of view towards the sports. They almost don’t say anything about women’s sports. They are either criticizing or silent about the issued regarding women’s sports. They don’t see it as their job to reflect any news on women’s sports.

And they never publish any photos of sportswomen. Although we criticize the policies on women’s sports we cannot make a huge deal out of it. As for photo’s we won’t publish large images. Sometimes we only publish images of disabled women’s sports: which is insulting in anyway you look at it.

Do you think the government’s influence in sports has different outcome for women’s sports and men’s sports? For example on there oversees deployment or news coverage?

The point is that I think if we privatize sports we cannot have the same Greenhouse system for women’s sports. Then governmental fund can only support women’s sports for short period of time each year and the rest should be earned by advertising: this forces the games to be seen from media.

What do you think of Muslim women’s sports competitions?

The truth is that Ms. Hashemi’s personal interest towards women’s sports tremendously helped women’s sports in Iran and her support made the news on women’s sports be covered by media. We are way a head of other Muslim countries in women’s sports.

But in general women’s sports among Muslim countries is not much developed so the competitions have lower quality comparing to other world championships. National Television covered part of the opening of this years Muslim Women’s competitions but they cut it in the middle of competitions because there were some harmonic movements there in the opening ceremony (like Dancing).

(Please read the second part of this interview Next week.)