A television host for the London-based Iran International news network has been stabbed outside his home in the city in an attack that British police said was being investigated by specialist counterterrorism officers.
Pouria Zeraati, 36, was attacked on March 29 in Wimbledon, southwest London, by a group of men who fled the scene in a car, said Iran International, which is critical of Iran’s government.
Zeraati is being treated at a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. In a photograph posted on his Twitter account following the attack, Zeraati is pictured in his hospital bed smiling and flashing the ‘peace’ sign.
— Pouria Zeraati (@pouriazeraati) March 30, 2024
No arrests have yet been made. Police said it was not immediately clear why Zeraati was attacked, adding that they were “keeping an open mind as to any motivation” behind the assault.
London police said its Counter Terrorism Command had been assigned to the case because there had been a number of threats directed towards the network’s journalists “in recent times.”
In November 2022, two British-Iranian journalists working for Iran International were warned by British police of "credible" threats to their lives from Iranian security forces.
The channel had been reporting extensively on the nationwide anti-government protests that erupted in September of that year following the death of a young woman in police custody. Tehran accused the network of inciting the rioters.
Three months later, in February 2023, the network was forced to temporarily move its operations to Washington amid rising threats to its employees.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib said at the time that Iran International had been identified by Tehran as a "terrorist" organization.
Hannah Neumann, a member of the European Parliament, blamed the Iranian government for the attack on Zeraati.
“The long arms of the brutal Iranian regime. We all need to urgently do our homework to protect those who seek refuge here from transnational threats and violence,” she wrote on X.
The Iranian embassy in London immediately denied any involvement in the incident but dismissed Zeraati as a “so-called journalist.”
Zeraati hosted his own program called Last Word and has interviewed many influential politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel is a sworn enemy of Iran.
Karim Sajadpour, an analyst at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the attack a “wake-up call” for the United States and Europe.
“Iran is actively trying to kill reporters and activists in the West and nearly succeeded in the middle of London,” he said in a March 30 tweet.
In 2021, U.S. prosecutors charged four Iranians with the attempted abduction of an Iranian-American journalist and activist living in Brooklyn.
The journalist had been critical of Tehran. The Iranian government was behind that plot, the United States said.