TV Station Supporting Islamic Republic Operates Freely in the UK

A TV sta­tion sup­port­ing the Islam­ic Repub­lic was found to be able to broad­cast in the UK despite con­cerns about its overt sup­port for the Iran­ian regime. On 13 Novem­ber 2025, Iran­Wire report­ed that the TV chan­nel LuaLua TV, linked to Bahrai­ni oppo­si­tion and Iran, oper­at­ed unre­strict­ed in the UK. Despite new evi­dence of its ties to Iran’s gov­ern­ment and Hezbol­lah, LuaLua TV holds a British broad­cast­ing license, high­light­ing gaps in enforce­ment and over­sight around regime-aligned media in Britain. The arti­cle begins:

An Iran-linked Bahrai­ni oppo­si­tion TV chan­nel, LuaLua TV, is able to con­tin­ue freely oper­at­ing in the UK despite new evi­dence emerg­ing of its overt sup­port for the Iran­ian regime and its affil­i­ates. LuaLua TV, banned in the Unit­ed States, was found to have direct links to gov­ern­ment-backed chan­nels and groups des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions under Amer­i­can law. While UK author­i­ties have pre­vi­ous­ly revoked the license of Press TV, LuaLua TV con­tin­ues to hold a broad­cast­ing license from Ofcom. The GB News report under­scores the para­dox in UK media reg­u­la­tions; while some out­lets are decades-long tar­gets of gov­ern­ment scruti­ny, oth­ers remain over­looked, allow­ing pro-regime mes­sag­ing to con­tin­ue unim­ped­ed in Lon­don. The report high­lights recent MI5 warn­ings about poten­tial Iran-backed threats and plots with­in the UK, rais­ing fur­ther ques­tions about the man­age­ment of for­eign influ­ence operations.

Read more: https://iranwire.com/en/news/146365-tv-station-supporting-the-islamic-republic-operates-freely-in-the-uk/

Key Points

• LuaLua TV, a Bahrain oppo­si­tion sta­tion with Iran ties, con­tin­ues UK oper­a­tions despite US and EU bans.

• Evi­dence con­nects LuaLua TV with direct sup­port for the Iran­ian regime and groups des­ig­nat­ed by US authorities.

• The chan­nel holds a UK broad­cast­ing license while sim­i­lar out­lets have lost such per­mis­sions over secu­ri­ty concerns.

• MI5 and news reports high­light ongo­ing risks of Iran-backed plots and for­eign influ­ence in British media space.

How Iran Drives UK Influence Operations Through State Media and Proxy Channels

Iran’s broad­cast­ing and state tele­vi­sion oper­a­tions con­sti­tute a cen­tral pil­lar of Tehran’s influ­ence strat­e­gy in the Unit­ed King­dom, deploy­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed pro­pa­gan­da net­works that blend overt media chan­nels with covert dig­i­tal cam­paigns to under­mine British insti­tu­tions and shape pub­lic dis­course. The Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran Broad­cast­ing oper­ates Press TV as its Eng­lish-lan­guage flag­ship, which had its UK license revoked in Jan­u­ary 2012 after Ofcom found the chan­nel was run­ning edi­to­r­i­al oper­a­tions from Tehran rather than the UK, breach­ing broad­cast­ing reg­u­la­tions. Despite this revo­ca­tion, Iran­ian state media con­tin­ue oper­a­tions through proxy chan­nels and dig­i­tal plat­forms, with Tehran tripling IRIB’s 2025 bud­get to $480 mil­lion to enable glob­al pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions across eight inter­na­tion­al TV chan­nels and radio pro­grams in 32 lan­guages, coor­di­nat­ed with the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps and intel­li­gence ser­vices. The IRIB serves as what the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment termed “a crit­i­cal tool in the Iran­ian gov­ern­men­t’s mass sup­pres­sion and cen­sor­ship cam­paign,” using forced con­fes­sions obtained through tor­ture to intim­i­date pop­u­la­tions while con­duct­ing inter­na­tion­al dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tions that mix authen­tic and mis­lead­ing con­tent to polar­ize audiences.

The oper­a­tional archi­tec­ture extends beyond tra­di­tion­al broad­cast­ing into hybrid shad­ow war­fare that British intel­li­gence has iden­ti­fied as a top-tier nation­al secu­ri­ty threat. Iran oper­ates hun­dreds of web­sites and social media accounts in at least 32 lan­guages, with the dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work pri­mar­i­ly attrib­uted to the Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps, the Islam­ic Radios and Tele­vi­sions Union, and IRIB, tar­get­ing diverse audi­ences through seem­ing­ly inde­pen­dent news out­lets that obscure their state con­nec­tions. The UK intel­li­gence com­mit­tee doc­u­ment­ed that threats from Iran­ian oper­a­tions are now con­sid­ered on par with those from Rus­sia, with at least 15 Iran­ian-backed assas­si­na­tion or kid­nap plots tar­get­ing UK-based dis­si­dents and jour­nal­ists since 2022, prompt­ing the gov­ern­ment to place Iran’s intel­li­gence and secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment on the high­est tier of a for­eign influ­ence watchlist.

In response to esca­lat­ing threats, the UK imple­ment­ed the For­eign Influ­ence Reg­is­tra­tion Scheme requir­ing reg­is­tra­tion of all polit­i­cal activ­i­ties linked to Iran’s state appa­ra­tus, reflect­ing what secu­ri­ty sources char­ac­ter­ize as Iran­ian net­works already inside Britain engag­ing in dig­i­tal dis­in­for­ma­tion, intim­i­da­tion, and exploita­tion of the UK’s legal sys­tem. These Iran­ian broad­cast­ing and influ­ence strate­gies fre­quent­ly inter­sect with Russ­ian and Chi­nese media oper­a­tions, ampli­fy­ing the reach and impact of dis­in­for­ma­tion while Iran­ian-linked orga­ni­za­tions part­ner with far-left move­ments in ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic norms and ampli­fy­ing sub­ver­sive nar­ra­tives across British society.

Exter­nal references:

• UK faces ris­ing and unpre­dictable threat from Iran, report warns – BBC News
• Iran­ian dig­i­tal influ­ence efforts: Guer­ril­la broad­cast­ing for the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry – Atlantic Council
• Ofcom pow­er­less to stop Lon­don-based TV sta­tion broad­cast­ing sup­port for Hamas – The Telegraph

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.