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Saudi TV station under fire in Iraq for calling Sinwar, Nasrallah ‘terrorists’
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s commission governing media announced Saturday that it would take steps to revoke the license of a Saudi television station to operate in the country after the channel referred to leaders of Iranian proxies, including former Hamas and Hezbollah chiefs, as terrorists.
The commission’s announcement came hours after dozens of supporters of Iraqi militias stormed and looted the office of the broadcaster, MBC, in Baghdad in protest over the report.
“They wrecked the electronic equipment, the computers, and set fire to a part of the building,” an interior ministry source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Security forces are still deployed near the building,” he added. There were no immediate reports of arrests.
The second source confirmed that the offices had been “set on fire” and “badly ransacked.”
They included Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a veteran Iraqi militant who was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries and founder of the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades.
Iraq’s Media and Communications Commission said in a statement that MBC had violated the country’s broadcasting regulations through “attacks on the martyrs, leaders of victory and heroic resistance leaders who are fighting the battle of honor against the usurping Zionist entity,” referring to Israel, and that it would order its executive office to cancel the station’s work license.
The station had already closed its doors following the attack.
Saudi Arabia’s regulatory authority for media subsequently announced that it had referred “officials of a TV channel to investigation due to a news report that violates the Kingdom’s media regulations and policy.” It didn’t name MBC.
The controversy came against the backdrop of heightened regional tensions surrounding the wars between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have played a minor role in the conflict, launching drone attacks on bases housing US troops in the country in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel’s involvement in the wars and, increasingly in recent months, firing at targets within Israel.
Earlier this month, two Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 were wounded in a drone attack in the Golan Heights by the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
The Times of Israel