"Iranian newspapers are full of enemies of the Revolution and Islam, supporters of Zionism, spies and homosexuals.”

In Iran this week, newsrooms and journalists are abuzz with  a new fear – a recent list that has surfaced of to-be-banned journalists.

The list has been published by a website close to the powerful Revolutionary Guards, warning that the journalists who are betraying the Islamic Republic will be dealt with imminently. For now we are watching you, it says.

No one knows who these “sedition provokers and the spies in the governmental newspapers” are. The list only includes their initials, and ominously, National ID Card numbers.

Solh News, the conservative website who claims to have access to these journalists’ cases, says the list includes those who actively reported the post-election uprising in 2009, have written articles against the regime and have been in touch with the foreigners. The website claims these reporters had gone into hiding for a few years but have re-emerged after the election of President Hassan Rouhani to once again become active in the media.

“They were mercifully forgiven and released from prison but under the new government they resumed their destructive activities,” an “informed source” told Solh News. “But all their activities in past and present have being recorded and they are still under surveillance.”

Journalists both inside the country and abroad worriedly checked the list. A reporter in Tehran told me the initial of her first name and the two digits of her ID card were similar to one of the names on the list. She think she has gotten away this time, but the worry still lurks.

These new threats, by virtue of appearing on a marginal (if well-connected) website, have still unsettled many in Tehran deeply. Journalists working for the country's independent newspapers believed that with Rouhani's election the climate for free expression in the press would be improved. The president has called on both government and the clergy to roll back restrictions on access to the Internet and permit more media freedom, in line with his campaign promises of a more moderate Iranian state.

The list seems to call these expectations into question, or at least pose the very real risk that not everyone within the political establishment is willing to go along. But some reporters say the counter-intuitively, the publishing of such a list might mean that reporters are actually faring as well as can be expected.

A journalist at Shargh - a newspaper which was named as the nest of spy-reporters by Solh news - says that he doesn’t take these threats seriously. “Solh News is not a credible website. No one has heard anything about it before. They publish these kind of news to get more hits and become famous.”

Another journalist in Tehran believes the fact that the Revolutionary Guards is publishing “this vague list” is a good sign. “It shows under the new government the Guards and the Intelligence Ministry cannot put pressure on journalists [directly] as they did before. They only publish a list to say we are still in charge, while they are not. We say in Farsi a dog that barks, doesn't bite. These things do not worry me at all.”

But some whose work falls in media realm are quite worried indeed. On 9th of December the local state TV channel in Kerman Province published a video of some arrested bloggers. In the video three of them are facing the wall and the prosecutor is saying they have been trained by “imperialist media” in Turkey and Malaysia to “overthrow the Islamic Republic. The video carried the logo of the Revolutionary Guards.

The arrested bloggers were writers and staff of Iranian tech news website Narenji.ir. The site administrators posted a list of those arrested, but it was quickly removed from the site. Mehr News Agency reports that these ‘16 Cyber Activists’ have been arrested and have been accused of harming national security.

While it's never clear in Iran which branch of the state's expansive and fragmented security apparatus is responsible for such arrests, the messages journalist here is strong and clear: they are being watched closely, and detention always looms as a possibility, however distant. Solh news quotes the blog posts and even Facebook comments of these journalists dating back four years ago and says nothing is forgotten.

The website says it will not let Iranian newspapers become houses of “enemies of the Revolution and Islam, supporters of Zionism, spies and homosexuals.”

Journalists in Tehran say they are alarmed but not excessively worried. The fear is strong, but not paralysing, especially for those who have not found their name on “the list.” The new freedom of Iranian media is not a dream for them, and even if it is, it’s not still over.

Andeesheh Azad is a prominent Iranian journalist based abroad.