Iran International targeted by Tehran, says channel after London stabbing

Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards have been targeting the broadcaster Iran International, a spokesperson for the channel said after a leading journalist was stabbed in London.

The Persian-language news television channel that employed Pouria Zeraati, who was attacked outside his London home, had received an increased level of threats beforehand, Adam Baillie told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Saturday.

Iran International has been under “heavy threat for the last 18 months”, Baillie said. “Families [in Iran] have been taken in for questioning. The scale of that has increased dramatically over the last few months and the scale of questioning has been more aggressive: ‘Tell your relatives to stop working for this channel.’”

On Friday, a group of men reportedly attacked Zeraati, a presenter for the channel, as he left his home in Wimbledon. Metropolitan police officers responding to a call to the address said they found a man in his 30s who had sustained an injury to his leg. Zeraati was taken to a hospital, where he is in stable condition, Baillie said. No arrests were made.

While Baillie declined to say who Iran International believed was behind the attack, the Met’s counter-terroism unit is leading the investigation, something that “probably speaks for itself”, he said.

Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, said on Friday: “While we are keeping an open mind, given the occupation of the victim and our publicised concerns about the threat to employees of that organisation, the investigation is being led by the counter-terrorism command.

“I must stress that, at this early stage of our investigation, we do not know the reason why this victim was attacked and there could be a number of explanations for this.”

Iran International, established in 2017, broadcasts from London but is aimed primarily at Iranian viewers. According to independent surveys, it is the most widely watched news channel in Iran, but Iranians can only access the channel through virtual private networks (VPNs) because it is banned there. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has labelled the channel, along with BBC Persia, as a “terrorist” channel, Baillie said.

The channel really began seeing an uptick in threats after their coverage of the protests over Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody following her arrest under Iran’s harsh hijab laws in 2022. In January, the UK and the US issued sanctions against seven Iranian officials and IRGC’s Unit 840 after an ITV investigation into plots to assassinate two Iran International presenters on UK soil.

Baillie said the attack on Zeraati was “hugely frightening” and had left many of the channel’s staff shaken. But even with the threats, Iran International’s journalists are resolved to keep reporting. “For us, it will change nothing,” he said.

“You can imagine the effect that does have, but they carry on with their work,” Baillie said. “People are very committed to the idea of a free independent news service for Iran.”