This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl reported on a type of proxy war Iran is waging around the world: hiring hitmen to intimidate, abduct and assassinate perceived enemies. Among the dissidents the Iranian government is increasingly targeting are journalists working abroad to report Iranian news.
“They killed journalism inside Iran. And now they are trying to spread the censorship and kill journalism outside the country,” said Mehdi Parpanchi, the news director of Iran International, a Persian-language news outlet established in 2017.
Based between London and Washington, D.C., Iran International is banned in Iran, though it can be accessed within the country through satellite television. Reporting on topics that would be otherwise censored in Iran, the outlet became a prominent source of information on the anti-government protests in the country last year. Protests over hijab laws engulfed Iran when Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, was arrested for opposing the laws and died in police custody.
Tehran considers Iran International a terrorist organization, claiming the channel has ties to Saudi Arabia. Anyone working for…
