On September 15, 2023, two governments sanctioned the same Iranian newsroom on the same day. The United States added Tasnim News Agency to its list of designated entities. The European Union listed it for what it called “serious human rights violations in Iran.”
The reason was not a headline or an editorial line. Both pointed to what Tasnim did with protesters.
What the EU said
The EU’s listing describes Tasnim as the largest media outlet tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a “propaganda machine” whose coverage often reflects hard-line views. Its entry, under the name Tasnim Cultural Institution Organization, notes the agency was registered in Iran on June 30, 2012. The charge: running false confessions from protesters, and putting demonstrators’ photographs online with a request that readers help work out who they were.
For families across Asia and the Middle East who follow Iranian news, the point is simple. A news site that publishes a protester’s face and invites strangers to name that person is doing something other than reporting.
The American case
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced 29 designations that day, tied to the crackdown on nationwide protests after Mahsa “Zhina” Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police. It was the 13th round of designations tied to the unrest that started in September 2022. Washington acted together with the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Three media outlets were on the list: Fars News, Tasnim and Press TV. Treasury said Tasnim grew out of the work of two IRGC commanders, Majid Gholizadeh together with Hamidreza Moghadam Far, who remain its executives, and Treasury says they exert control on the Guards’ behalf. It accused the agency of helping the IRGC, Iran’s intelligence ministry and the Law Enforcement Forces to crowdsource the identities of protesters.
Gholizadeh, once an IRGC commander himself, is the agency’s chief executive and, in Treasury’s words, an IRGC propagandist. Moghadam Far chairs the board and has advised the Guards’ commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, and served as the Guards’ cultural deputy.
Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the movement across Iran “was met with horrific violence, mass incarceration, and systemic internet disruption by the Iranian regime.” The United States and its partners, he added, “will continue to take collective action against those who suppress Iranians’ exercise of their human rights.”
Treasury designated Tasnim under Executive Order 13553, the authority aimed at grave rights abuses by Tehran, on the grounds that the IRGC owns or controls it.
Sources
- Treasury Sanctions Iranian Officials and Companies Connected to Repression in Advance of the Anniversary of Mahsa Zhina Amini's Death (US Treasury)
- Official Journal of the European Union, L series 2023: Iran human rights sanctions listing, Tasnim entry
