The US government seizure of the .com domains of 33 foreign news websites, including Press TV, is an outrageous attack against the foreign press, with US President Joe Biden using emergency powers and sanctions imposed against Iran by Trump.
The United States has launched one of the most outrageous attacks on the press and foreign media during which over two dozen news outlets, including Press TV, had their.com domains seized and were taken offline.
What do these sites have in common? Why were they targeted by the United States, and what does that say about a country that claims to champion so called democracy and freedom of the press?
They are Muslim, Arabic, Persian and form part of the Axis of Resistance and go against the US narrative, which is why they were targeted.
This brazen act of piracy and authoritarianism constitutes one of the most serious affronts to journalists and foreign media in recent times.
On June 23, 2021, the United States government seized the websites of several news broadcasters and media outlets belonging to Iran and its allies in one fell swoop.
The websites targeted included Palestine today, as well as Iran’s Al-Alam, which is an Arabic language broadcaster, they included Iraq’s Al Thurat and Yemen’s Al Masirah, just to name a few of the 33 outlets seized by the US.
Anyone attempting to access press tv.com is now met with a message that reads, “This website has been seized”, bearing the daunting seal of the US Department of Justice and Department of Commerce.
It’s important to understand the US government didn’t just block these news sites inside the United States, within its own borders, it blocked them worldwide for everyone, rendering them inaccessible after seizing their.com domain names.
This is reminiscent of how the US has also seized Iranian oil and sold it off like pirates or seized Venezuela’s gold or seized Syria’s oil fields. This is criminal behavior; it’s piracy on the state level.
Now the next day a statement was released by the US Department of Justice confirming the seizure of, not just press TV’s website, but a total of 33 outlets, that’s 33 news sites that all have their websites taken down on the same day.
So the question here is what do all these channels have in common? They’re Muslim, they’re Arabic, they’re Persian, they are anti imperialist and they form part of the Axis of Resistance.
In an attempt to justify this blatant act of theft and suppression of the media, Joe Biden used the United States emergency laws.
Joe Biden declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act which allows him to designate an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States”.
Apparently, the programs and words of Press TV are so upsetting that the US feels the need to activate its emergency laws just to silence it for speaking the truth.
What the US is doing here is outrageous. It’s accusing four news outlets of being run by Iran, elite Special Forces, and then using National Emergency laws to silence them and calling that counterterrorism.
The DOJ statement refers to sanctions imposed on Iran by former US President Donald Trump in October 2020.
Those sanctions specifically target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, and the Islamic radios and televisions union IRTVU.
And if you look at what they say, The Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, claims absurdly, and without any evidence, that these news outlets are “owned or controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds force, and also, “disguised as news organizations or media outlets, targeting the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations”.
So they’re making this outrageous claim that Press TV and other outlets are being run by the IRGC, and more specifically, the Quds force.
Now, as you may well know, the Quds force is an elite branch of the IRGC, it was formerly headed by General Ghassem Soleimani.
Donald Trump murdered Haj Ghassem and Abu Madi in January 2020. They were an incremental part in helping defeat al Qaeda and defeat Daesh in Syria and Iraq.
Undoubtedly the Quds force plays a crucial role in the resistance, but to claim that it’s running these news outlets is absurd and akin to saying that CNN is being run by the Navy SEALs or Delta Force, it’s just not true and doesn’t make any sense.
Now typically all websites that end in.com are managed by an American company called VeriSign, and apparently, because these news sites did not obtain sanctions exemption, the US thinks that it has the right to just shut them down.
The United States claims jurisdiction over.com domains, and has used that claim in the past to sue people overseas. But let’s be clear here, this has nothing to do with sanctions exemptions or.com domains.
First of all, the United States would not have given any such sanctions exemption in the first place, because these outlets tell the truth about the United States, Israel and Great Britain.
Second of all, if this was just about domains, why didn’t the US government shut down every single domain that is even remotely connected to the IRGC or IRTVU?
They didn’t, because their goal was to attack the media, and shut down outlets that they don’t like. This is an attack on the press.
You can see clearly how there’s practically no difference between Trump and Biden, both of them make ridiculous accusations that these outlets are somehow running disinformation campaigns and are being run by elite special forces, and then Biden goes ahead and uses sanctions that Trump created against Iran to seize the websites of Iranian broadcasters.
The allegations leveled against them by the US, that they spread disinformation, are no different from the ones that fueled the Russia gate scandal during the past four years. They’re unproven.
You might recall that Trump was heavily criticized by the Democrats in the media for his “unprecedented use and abuse of emergency powers and executive orders”, he even declared a national emergency so he could secure funding for his border wall.
Many, including Joe Biden, called Trump an existential threat, and have called him out for attacking the media.
