TEHRAN -- The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on top officials of Iran’s state broadcaster, including the organization chief and head of the world service.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said it was designating six senior employees of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), which was designated by Washington in 2013.
It alleged that IRIB had broadcast “hundreds of forced confessions of Iranian, dual national, and international detainees in Iran.”
The sanctions target IRIB chief Peyman Jebeli, head of IRIB World Service and CEO of English-language Press TV television news network Ahmad Norouzi, IRIB Vice Director General Mohsen Barmahani, Director of Press TV’s Programs Department Yousef Pour-Anvari, as well as IRIB senior correspondents Ali Rezvani and Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour.
On Saturday, the European Union announced new sanctions on a further 29 Iranian officials and three organizations for alleged crackdown on protests, which began following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman, who collapsed in police custody and was pronounced dead a few days later at hospital.
IRIB’s World Service in general has played a remarkable role as the counterweight to Western propagandist media for years, demolishing and debunking their lop-sided and unfair coverage of Iran and the region.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Friday

condemned Washington’s sanctions as a violation of the rights of the Iranian nation.
Taking to Twitter, Kanaani said the sanctions come while anti-Iran “terrorist media outlets” are free to foment chaos inside Iran through their propaganda campaign.
“Allowing terrorist networks and media outlets to make mischief against the Iranian nation and sanctioning IRIB and Press TV to block Iran’s views from being conveyed to the world is the continuation of the American administration’s blatant violation of the Iranian nation’s rights,” Kanaani wrote in a post in Persian.
“There is no end to America’s crimes against independent nations and governments,” he added.