The Bombed Iranian Broadcaster, Groundwork for Genocide & AP Cover Up

By: Tamar Sternthal June 17, 2025

“Genocides do not start with bullets or machetes, they begin with hate speech,” the United Nations explained, adding:

The Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers, but with hate speech. The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda began with decades of hate speech exacerbated by ethnic tensions. The Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina began with constant nationalist propaganda throughout party-controlled media channels demonizing the Bosnian Muslim population. In recent years, the world has witnessed several mass atrocities. In many of these cases, hate speech was identified as a “precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide.” 

Genocides likewise do not begin with ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons. Iran’s genocidal plans to wipe Israel off the face of the earth began with genocidal rhetoric and hate speech, mass delivered to its population via state-controlled propaganda outlets.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), which Israel’s air force bombed yesterday, is a tool in Iran’s vast propaganda arsenal fueling its genocidal aims. Its various organs, including Press TV, Sahar TV, IRIB Ofogh and the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, all spew antisemitic, genocidal rhetoric.

But don’t count on the Associated Press, which prides itself on advancing the power of facts, to inform its millions of readers about the state-run media’s role in laying the groundwork for genocide.

Thus, the wire service’s coverage yesterday, “Israeli strike on Iranian state TV fills studio with dust and debris during live tv broadcast,” depicts the fact that the network serves the Iranian regime in its pursuit of genocide as nothing more than an unverified Israeli claim. AP thus attributes the information to an Israeli source, as if the vast news agency can’t possibly confirm for itself the network’s incitement:

“The Iranian regime’s propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority was attacked by the IDF after a widespread evacuation of the area’s residents,” Israel Katz said in a statement. “We will strike the Iranian dictator everywhere.”

The AP article polishes the Iranian television station’s facade as a legitimate news outlet with unchallenged quotes of outrage from the Committee for Protection of Journalists:

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “appalled by Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state TV channel while live on air.”

“Israel’s killing, with impunity, of almost 200 journalists in Gaza has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region,” Sara Qudah, the Middle East representative for CPJ, said in a statement.

(About those “journalists” in Gaza, see here.) What kind of legitimate journalists play an active role in persecuting its country’s citizens, broadcasting forced television confessions extracted under torture? As BBC has noted: 

All broadcasting from Iranian soil is controlled by the state and reflects official ideology. . . .

Iran is one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists, says Reporters Without Borders. They are “constantly subjected to intimidation, arbitrary arrest and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials”.

Today’s AP coverage about the Israeli attack on the state-controlled Iranian network continues to deliver up nothing but static on the station’s total subservience to the Iranian regime and collaboration with the rulers’ genocidal plans, selectively reporting (“Israel warns 300,000 people in Tehran to evacuate as Trump issues ominous message“):

State-run television abruptly stopped a live broadcast after the station was hit, according to Iran’s state-run news agency. While on the air, an Iranian state television reporter said the studio was filling with dust after “the sound of aggression against the homeland.” Suddenly, an explosion occurred, cutting the screen behind her as she hurried off camera.

The broadcast quickly switched to prerecorded programs. The station later said its building was hit by four bombs.

An anchor said on air that a few colleagues had been hurt, but their families should not be worried. The network said its live programs were transferred to another studio.

The television station’s role as a vehicle for antisemitic indoctrination is longstanding. ACIS, the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, reported in 2008:

Throughout May-June 2008, the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) aired the documentary series, ‘The Secrets of Armageddon’. This series made widespread use of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to base the claim that international Zionism aims to take over the world. In twenty-six episodes, the producers of this series also presented supposed historical plans of global Zionism to take over Iran (MEMRI-TV, clip 1802). . . .

An additional innovation in the Iranian attack on Zionism can be found in documentary series that focus on Jews and their control over the global film industry. A twenty-six episode documentary, “Footprints of Zionism in World Cinema,” which aired during May-June 2008 on IRINN, seeks to expose the “true colors” of the global film industry. The series promotes the perception that the Western film industry – primarily Hollywood – is controlled by Zionists who strive to inculcate the viewers with Zionist subliminal messages. The creators of the series, with the aid of Iranian specialists who were interviewed, explained that these messages are meant to provide a basis for the State of Israel’s legitimacy and to justify its “criminal” policies. They warn that these messages operate on the sub-conscious of the viewer, and that consequently the viewer is convinced of the veracity of the messages. To substantiate this thesis, the series’ producers in Iran analyze a sequence of Western films of different genres and periods, including ‘Ben-Hur’ (1959), ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ (1971), ‘La vita è bella’ (1997), ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998), ‘Meet the Parents’ (2000), ‘Chicken Run’ (2000) and ‘The Pianist’ (2002).

Against the backdrop of pictures from the successful British animation movie, ‘Chicken Run’ (2000), the narrator explains that the images of the fenced farm along with other visual elements are meant to conjure associations of concentration camps, and that the longings of the caged chickens for a utopian place is a metaphor for the Zionist nationalist longings (MEMRI-TV,clip 1787). While discussing ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ the Iranian experts in the series determined that the positive and sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish character in the film is meant to present to the viewers with a distorted picture of the reasons and the historical background surrounding Jewish migration to the land of Israel (MEMRI-TV, clip 1807).

AP’s silence on the television station’s collaboration with the Iranian fascist genocidal regime stands in stark contrast to its characterization of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, a public research university in Rehovot, which was damaged in an Iranian missile attack two days ago. About the Weizmann Institute, AP did not hesitate to clearly state as fact the university’s alleged connection to the Israeli military, suggesting the legitimacy of an academic institution as a target (“Israel and Iran trade strikes for a third day and threaten more to come“): 

The Weizmann Institute of Science, a center for military and other research also in Rehovot, reported “a number of hits to buildings on the campus” and said no one was harmed. (Emphasis added.)

AP’s erasure of the state broadcaster’s incitement is not the first time that the news agency has whitewashed Iran’s genocidal aims. After falsely reporting in 2018 that “Iran has never threated to attack Israel,” the news agency subsequently published a “clarification” alleging that Iran’s very real threats were merely a matter of Israel perception, as opposed to verifiable fact. Then, AP’s 2023 reporting on Iran’s unveiling of new attack drones erased the regime’s threat to Israelis: “Prepare your shelters.”

Even as Iran’s long-voiced threats have come to fruition, with much of Israel’s entire population running to shelters every few hours to seek protection from the regime’s mass attacks targeting civilians, AP perseveres with its well-honed practice of whitewashing Iran’s genocidal intentions.

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