Trump Should Sanction and Penalize IRIB, Tasnim, Fars, and IRNA: Democracy Defense Foundation
The Trump administration should sanction Iran’s state-controlled media outlets, including the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), as well as the Fars, Tasnim, and Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) news agencies, for their actions during recent anti-regime protests by the people and for facilitating human rights violations.
The “Democracy Defense Foundation,” an influential research center in Washington that conducts research on national security and foreign policy issues, made this assertion in a policy report published on Tuesday.
According to the foundation’s report, “IRIB, during the people’s protests against the regime, exclusively published photos of protesters and made them available to the public, asking people to identify the protesters and report them to security agencies so that they could be arrested.
Arrested protesters in prison have been systematically subjected to mistreatment and torture, which in some cases has led to the death of detainees, and the regime has attributed their deaths to ‘suicide’ while in detention.”
According to the Democracy Defense Foundation’s report, the Tasnim news agency published photos of protesting individuals and asked the public to identify and report them. Tasnim then published coerced confessions extracted from detainees.
The Democracy Defense Foundation’s report notes that “both Tasnim and Fars news agencies are under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” and adds that “Fars news agency has access to prisons under IRGC control and has repeatedly published coerced confessions extracted from prisoners.”
According to the Democracy Defense Foundation’s report, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), which is part of the executive branch, “despite publishing threatening and offensive statements, has acted in a way that it does not come under sanctions.”
IRNA “has representations in foreign countries, and if it comes under U.S. sanctions, there would be a possibility of closing these representations.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and its executive director have been on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list since 2013, but every six months this sanction is suspended because Iran has agreed to refrain from jamming the signals of foreign satellites that broadcast programs to Iranians.
In its report, the Democracy Defense Foundation “presented extensive evidence showing that Iran continues to use ground-based jamming rather than satellite jamming,” and has requested that the White House, in addition to not suspending the IRIB sanctions, also place three Iranian state news agencies on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list.
The foundation’s report states: “It is now time to lift the suspension of IRIB sanctions and penalize state news agencies that facilitate human rights violations in Iran, and to add the names of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s partners—Tasnim news agency, Fars news agency, and IRNA—to the sanctions list.”
The “Democracy Defense Foundation” report was prepared by the foundation’s experts, Richard Goldberg, former deputy chief of staff to Senator Mark Kirk, and Saeed Ghasseminejad.
Source: Voice of America
