TEHRAN, Jul 19 — Tasnim News Agency, the Iranian semi-official outlet long tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been operating on a new domain address since its main website went dark at the start of the year. Tasnimnews.com stopped working on January 12, 2026, prompting the agency to shift to a .ir domain. Both Tasnim and the Fars News Agency have publicly claimed the United States blocked the site.
For communities across Asia and the Middle East who rely on Tasnim for news from inside Iran, this domain disruption represents another layer of uncertainty in a region already dense with information battles. The agency itself, however, is no ordinary newsroom.
It was founded on June 30, 2012, by figures deeply embedded in the Iranian state’s security apparatus.
Born of the IRGC
Tasnim’s founding team includes IRGC commander Hamidreza Moghaddamfar, board chairman Jafar Darouneh — who formerly ran Tehran’s Department of Education under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and CEO Majid Qolizadeh Zahmatkesh. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls the outlet, making it the IRGC’s largest owned media organization. Headquartered in Tehran, Tasnim maintains a network of reporters across Iran and the Middle East.
The agency’s stated mission is to cover political, social, economic and international subjects while defending the Islamic Republic against what it terms negative media propaganda campaigns. On September 15, 2023, the European Union sanctioned Tasnim for “serious human rights violations in Iran.” The EU specifically cited the publication of forced confessions by protesters and the posting of images asking the public to help identify them.
On the same day, the U.S. Department of the Treasury added Tasnim to the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. The watchdog site Tehran Bureau has described Tasnim as playing an active role in the Iranian government’s state-led disinformation campaigns against protesters. Despite the sanctions and the recent domain shift, Tasnim has been expanding its language footprint.
The agency launched a Hebrew-language website in 2022. The following year, it signed a deal with the Russian state-backed outlet Sputnik to operate a Russian-language site.
Tasnim publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, a detail that allows its content to be republished widely even as the agency itself faces greater restrictions from Western governments. What this means for audiences across Asia who regularly encounter Tasnim’s reporting — whether via social media, syndication, or direct access — is that the outlet remains a central voice in Iran’s state-aligned media ecosystem, even as its digital doorways keep shifting.
The next chapter will likely involve further tests of just how far the agency’s IRGC-backed infrastructure can stretch beyond its own domain troubles.
