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Al-Monitor – Iran’s Minister of Intelligence Esmaeil Khatib said the government of the United Kingdom will be held responsible for hosting Persian-language channels he accused of encouraging protests in Iran.
According to Khatib, the “biggest influence on the country for unrest and riots” is coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The UK hosts both Manoto and Iran International news channels, in addition to the BBC Persian-language service, which Iranians access through satellite. “The UK will pay the costs for its actions creating unrest in Iran,” Khatib said.
Khatib added that Iran International has been labeled a terrorist organization according to the country’s intelligence services. He continued, “Agents of the network will be pursued by the Intelligence Ministry, and any relationship with this terrorist organization will be considered terrorist activity and a threat to national security.”
Iran now is nearly two months into protests that began after the country’s morality police apprehended a young woman who later died in custody. Over 300 people have died in the protests across the country, according to international observers, and dozens of journalists and activists have been arrested. Foreign-based, Persian-language networks have played a large part in covering the protests and are sympathetic to them.
In addition to the crackdown on protests, Iran has sought to control the media narrative by attacking foreign-based, Persian-language media channels whose popularity has soared in the last few years as Iranians have sought alternatives to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting channels that have little to offer. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, has openly warned Saudi Arabia twice over Iran International, a channel based in London with links to the kingdom. According to journalists working for Iran International, the UK police have warned them of credible death threats.
Spokesman for President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration Ali Bahadory Jahromi also addressed the accusation that foreign countries are fomenting unrest in the country. “We will respond to the foreign enemies and do not doubt that if we get hit once we will respond twice; it’s just that sometimes we cannot state it,” he said. In response to the protests, Jahromi said that they differentiate between “rioters and protesters” and added that “we do not see protesters as the enemy.”
Jahromi said it is the “strategy of the enemy” to have the government go after the youth of the country and have the youth … go after the government, and they do not want to fall into this trap. He said this is why “there has been an appeasement of the rioters” up to this point.
