Tehran, Iran – A senior judicial official says Iran is in the process of officially designating two London-based Persian-language television channels as “terrorists” for their coverage of ongoing unrest in the country.
Kazem Gharibabadi, the judiciary’s deputy for international affairs, says cases are being documented against BBC Persian and Iran International with the aim of blacklisting them in their entirety for “leading and inciting riots, destroying public and private property and equipment and terrorist acts”.
“These two channels and their agents should be added to the list of terrorist groups and individuals,” it said in a statement.
The BBC issued a statement on Sunday night calling the charges “completely fabricated”.
“Threats of action against BBC Persian staff for the work they do as journalists are completely unacceptable, and the BBC will continue to support them. Such false comments support the importance of our reliable reporting, on which millions in Iran depend,” the channel said.
The two channels have been denounced by Iranian authorities for years, but this is the first time that Tehran plans to take legal action against them.
The country’s Foreign Office on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a number of British institutions and individuals, including the two channels and their parent companies.
The sanctions include a ban on issuing visas to individuals, seizing their assets on Iranian soil and blocking any bank accounts they may have in the country.
The Iranian actions came shortly after the European Union and the United Kingdom announced separate sanctions against various Iranian authorities and institutions, both for their role in what European officials called a “brutal crackdown on protests” and for their alleged role in the supply of drones to Russia. used against Ukraine in the war.
Protests that have spread across Iran erupted more than a month ago after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police following her arrest for allegedly failing to comply with the country’s dress code.
Iranian authorities blamed the US, Israel and others for “inciting riots” across the country and also attacked positions in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq to punish what they called “terrorist” secessionist groups.
In his denunciation of the London-based TV channels, Gharibabadi, the judicial officer, also promised that “the role of the countries that host and support these channels, namely Britain and Saudi Arabia, will also not go unnoticed.”
This came days after Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), issued a direct warning to Saudi Arabia, which Tehran blames for funding Iran International, among others.
“I warn you to be careful with your behavior and control this media,” he said in a televised address. “You have interfered in our internal affairs through these means, but you must know that you are vulnerable.”
different narratives
The increasing focus on the role of the media in the ongoing protests comes as Iranian state-affiliated media and foreign-based outlets have offered different narratives about the country’s unrest. This has been true for demonstrations both inside and outside of Iran.
On Saturday, large crowds gathered in various European and American cities in solidarity with Iranian women. In the German capital Berlin, which saw the largest crowds, police said some 80,000 people had gathered by late afternoon, making it the largest gathering of the Iranian diaspora.
Overseas-based media widely covered the event, reporting that Iranians came from different cities and countries, chanting slogans that have been widely used inside the country during the protests, including “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
But in an article on Sunday, the state-run IRNA news website said the Berlin rally marked a “shocking defeat for the enemies of Islamic Iran” because, it alleged, some of the protesters were not Iranian and were paid to be there. , while others were “secessionists” or linked to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which Tehran has blacklisted as a “terrorist” organization.
Within the country, videos of sporadic demonstrations continue to circulate on social media as internet restrictions remain, making access to social media platforms extremely difficult.
