The Shadow of Soft War by Sarafraz over IRIB

Nearly a year and three months after Mohammad Sarafraz was appointed as the head of IRIB by Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, the number of challenges and crises faced by Iran's most important state media has increased continuously over the past year. In the latest development, IRIB has been forced to dismiss two key managers in its most important international section, 'Press TV', due to allegations of sexual harassment. One of the dismissed individuals, Hamidreza Emadi, the news director of Press TV, is on the EU sanctions list alongside Mr. Sarafraz for human rights violations. The verbal sexual harassment in the audio file published by Ms. Shina Shirani is too clear for IRIB to ignore, but in a statement released by a Press TV public relations official as an official response, an attempt has been made to defend the accused and IRIB. Since Mr. Sarafraz took office, his political and security team has been the main administrators of the IRIB's international department. IRIB has described the release of this audio file as an act by regime opponents with the aim of political exploitation. IRIB has also tried to question the legal credibility of Ms. Shirani's complaint by claiming that the complainant did not file a complaint in domestic courts. This excuse from IRIB was criticized so much in the media space that even the Tabnak website inside Iran, despite all restrictions, criticized the Press TV managers for mentioning the lack of a complaint as a factor for the suspiciousness of the matter, stating: 'It seems that if there is no complaint, all the ugliness mentioned in the audio file seems forgivable!' Comparing the response from IRIB, provided to the IRNA news agency, with a response published by Hamidreza Emadi on Telegram shows that IRIB's response contains the same arguments that the accused in this sexual harassment case has used in his defense. Mr. Emadi attributed the release of this file to an individual named 'Lee Justin Hall'. In other words, in IRIB's official response, the defense of the accused manager has been repeated, who according to the announcement should have been suspended. However, this is not the only instance of Mr. Sarafraz's efforts to defend his colleagues in the international network and Press TV. The head of IRIB has also defended his special inspector, Shahrzad Mirgholikhani, regarding her departure from the country, describing her exit as a conspiracy by security agents opposed to the organization. Ms. Mirgholikhani, who once went to prison in the U.S. for attempting to illegally send night vision cameras to Iran, was the international manager of Press TV before Mr. Sarafraz's appointment. According to the head of IRIB, Ms. Mirgholikhani's laptop had previously been stolen, and security officials have not provided any explanation about this. Mr. Sarafraz's statement is somewhat a response to news about the publication of images of Ms. Mirgholikhani without a hijab on social media. Mr. Sarafraz has called this incident a psychological operation by security forces against IRIB. The policy of pursuing a soft war against the enemy in IRIB under Mr. Sarafraz and his team may have pleased hardliners and led to closer ties between this organization and some security centers close to the Revolutionary Guards and the judiciary, but it has not resolved the technical and professional crises within the organization or increased its audience. In addition to utilizing foreign personnel, Mr. Sarafraz has emphasized the same objectives that were presented as the goals of the international network in the soft war against the enemy, objectives that clearly placed the domestic audience alongside foreign audiences. This sensitivity reached a point where Mr. Sarafraz even approached the Revolutionary Guards' international department when appointing the head of IRIB's security, appointing the deputy commander of the Quds Force as the head of IRIB's security. Thus, the international department, which had little connection with other parts of IRIB due to the presence of many Arabic-speaking experts and forces, gained significant influence within this organization. Empowering political figures favored by Mr. Sarafraz in the international department of IRIB was only part of his political agenda within the organization. A review of the head of IRIB's statements in recent months shows that he has articulated his desired political strategy for governing the country and pursuing it as IRIB's political program more explicitly than any other head of this organization in the past thirty years. Clear examples of this trend can be seen in his remarks criticizing the government's emphasis on implementing the JCPOA and his criticism of the increasing number of registrations for elections, positions that starkly differ from the usual approach of IRIB heads. The consequence of this approach has been an increase in tensions between the Rouhani government and IRIB over the past year and the imposition of widespread censorship against the statements of government officials. A prominent example of this policy can be seen in the recent announcement regarding the censorship of the president's statements because he is a candidate for the Assembly of Experts or preventing the broadcast of the foreign minister's interview with the 90 program. Mr. Sarafraz's recent criticisms of the budget of IRIB indicate that he has not been very successful in solving the organization's financial problems either. He has also not achieved success in advancing the organization's technical programs. Two weeks ago, Akhavan Bahabadi, the deputy head of the organization for technology and new media, was dismissed, and an interim manager was appointed in his place. Mr. Bahabadi was the young man whom Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elevated to launch the national internet and pursued policies to control cyberspace as the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace. All these crises occur while there are no signs of an increase in the audience of IRIB, and major program makers in the organization have also come to the conclusion that they should abandon working in the organization and turn to producing series and television programs using the internet and home cinema networks; meanwhile, the war between television and cinema professionals, which IRIB has even subjected to censorship policies, has become a daily occurrence.