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Iran’s armed forces on August 26 warned that several Persian-language media outlets operating abroad were included in its “military target bank,” accusing them of working for United States and Israeli intelligence agencies.
In remarks published on state television, armed forces spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi named BBC Persian, Iran International and Radio Farda among the outlets.
“These hostile media outlets are the soldiers of Zionism and America and are included in our military target bank,” Shekarchi said, accusing them of being “directly connected to Mossad, CIA and enemy intelligence organizations.”
“The Iranian Armed Forces do not view these news outlets as media,” he added.
These targeted outlets constitute the primary channels of broadcasting Iranian opposition viewpoints directly into the Islamic Republic.
BBC Persian is part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, funded through the United Kingdom public license fee alongside government grant funding for foreign services.
Radio Farda operates out of Prague as the Iranian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which receives funding from the United States Congress via the United States Agency for Global Media.
Meanwhile, Iran International, an independent commercial news network headquartered in London and Washington, was historically launched with backing linked to private Saudi investors before reportedly transitioning its operational structure.
The Islamic Republic officially designated Iran International as a “terrorist organization” in 2022, criminalizing any public reporting, contact and affiliation with the network.
In addition, British counter-terrorism police previously claimed to have foiled multiple Iranian plots targeting journalists on UK soil, prompting heightened security measures around newsrooms in London.
BBC Persian recently drew severe public backlash for editorial slip-ups, such as quietly retracting extreme quotes from unverified sources while navigating accusations of biased headline framing.
Meanwhile, Iran International faced repeated accusations of sensationalism, promoting separatist groups, and running unverified anti-regime stories — such as fabricated torture cases — to amplify civil unrest, which severely damaged its reputation for objective journalism.
Radio Farda was also accused of ideological bias toward legacy monarchist figures and of playing an explicit role as a Cold War-style soft power weapon intended to influence domestic Iranian politics rather than maintain strictly neutral reporting on the Islamic Republic.
As is evident, Iran’s accusations of these foreign-funded outlets are not exactly out of thin air. The outlets have been undoubtedly involved in inciting discord within the Islamic Republic, and their coverage was generally supportive of the U.S.-Israeli war.
While Iran’s armed forces have not clarified how or where these outlets would be targeted, the threat is without a doubt a serious one.
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