British foreign secretary James Cleverly said that he had summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in the UK, Mehdi Hosseini Matin, “to make clear we will not tolerate threats to journalists in the UK”, Sky News reported. This came after a UK-based Iranian broadcaster Iran International TV was forced to move out of the UK due to assassination threats from Tehran after police warned of “imminent and credible threats to the lives of their journalists”.
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James Cleverly said the UK has also sanctioned members of the Iranian regime “involved in repressing and killing the Iranian people, including children”.
“Iran’s threats will never go unchallenged”, he tweeted while UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s spokeswoman said Iran’s charge d’affaires was summoned to the Foreign Office and a meeting took place with the director general for the Middle East.
“The UK will not tolerate threats to life and media freedom in the UK,” the spokeswoman said.
Since October last year, Iran’s charge d’affaires has been summoned every month over various human rights issues, including threats by Iranian security forces to journalists in the UK.
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UK security minister Tom Tugendhat condemned “this outrageous violation of our sovereignty” and confirmed eight individuals from the Iranian regime had been sanctioned on Monday, on top of the 300 sanctions already in place adding that counter-terrorism police are trying to find a safe place for Iran International TV to move to within the UK.
The channel said that it had “reluctantly” closed its London studios but its staff “refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats”.
Channel’s editor Niusha Boghrati said, “The threats have turned into a reality of terrorism. That is what the Met Police have been telling us. Threats were so real this time that they had to ask us to move the operation out of the country. It was hard to believe.”
