A Farsi-language satellite news channel based in London long critical of Iran's government said Saturday it had moved its broadcasts to Washington “to protect the safety of its journalists” after being targeted by Tehran.
Iran International described making the decision after London’s Metropolitan Police told it “about the existence of serious and immediate threats to the safety of Iranian journalists" working there.
Reached for comment, Iran International referred to a statement saying that “threats had grown to the point that it was felt it was no longer possible to protect the channel’s staff" or the public around its studio in London.
“A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move. Let’s be clear this is not just a threat to our TV station but the British public at large,” the channel's general manager Mahmood Enayat said. “Even more this is an assault on the values of sovereignty, security and free speech that the UK has always held dear.”
Enayat added: "We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats. We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred.”
The station has been giving extensive coverage to anti-regime demonstrations that erupted in Iran five months ago, and says two of its senior journalists received death threats in response to their reporting.
London's Metropolitan police force said that working with the MI5 spy agency, since the start of 2022, it had foiled 15 plots "to either kidnap or even kill" people seen as "enemies of the (Iranian) regime".
In November, the Met installed concrete barriers outside the studios in Chiswick, west London, to prevent any attack by vehicle.
