The mullahs of Iran are cracking down on the threat of bloggers: Iran cracks down on blog protests.

Six online journalists and webloggers have been arrested in Iran recently in a crackdown on dissent on the internet. “People charged for having illegal internet sites… will be put on trial soon,” said a judiciary spokesman.

The trials would be “open” and charges included “acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and insulting sanctities”. …

Journalists and relatives quoted by Reuters named the six people arrested as Shahram Rafizadeh, Babak Ghafouri-Azar, Rouzbeh Amir-Ebrahimi, Hanif Mazroui, Omid Memarian and Mostafa Derayati.

“We do not know where they are being held. We heard they have been kept in solitary confinement,” a relative is quoted as saying.

A nation that is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program would obviously want to stop the flow of unregulated information; blogs are a deadly threat to the mullahs for that reason. The last thing they want is an Iranian nuclear Rathergate.