 While the Harry Potter books are available for sale in Iran, an editorial in the 26 July 2007 edition of the state-run newspaper Kayhan, which has ties to Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry for approving the distribution of the final Harry Potter novel. The editorial claimed that the book, "includes destructive words and sentences which oppose to the values [of the Islamic Republic]," and that airport security had failed by "[trusting] the American-British publisher which has Zionist collaborators, such as Warner Bros .." The editorial described the books as a "Zionist project" and claimed that "Zionists had spent billions of dollars" on it.
