WASHINGTON -- The United States said it was aware of threats by Iran's armed forces to put Persian-language media outlets including RFE/RL's Radio Farda on a list of potential military targets, and pointed to what it said was Tehran's record of harassment and attempted attacks against journalists and dissidents abroad.
In an August 28 response to a query from RFE/RL, a State Department spokesperson said, "We are aware of these reports."
"The Iranian regime has repeatedly harassed and attempted to kidnap and kill journalists and Iranian dissidents worldwide simply for exercising their freedoms. This is longstanding, despicable behavior from a regime that has propagated terror globally for decades," the spokesperson said.
"The United States stands with innocent civilians targeted by Iran and continues working with allies and partners to expose these threats, share threat information, and hold perpetrators accountable," the spokesperson continued.
In a televised interview earlier this week, Iranian armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi named Radio Farda, Iran International, BBC Persian, and Manoto, and said their employees could be included in Iran's "bank of military targets." He called them "soldiers of Zionism and criminal America" and claimed, without providing evidence, that the outlets were connected variously to the CIA, Mossad, and other foreign intelligence services.
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"It's not a surprise that the Iranian regime would view outlets like Radio Farda and BBC Persian-language service as threats, since they don't want the Iranian people to know what's really happening," Kramer told RFE/RL.
"The regime's reaction shows that these services have a real impact inside Iran, whereas the regime prefers to operate through silence and violence against its own people and its neighbors," he said.
Radio Farda is the Iranian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which says its mission is to "promote democratic values by providing accurate, uncensored news and open debate in countries where a free press is threatened and disinformation is pervasive."
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The Czech Republic, which hosts RFE/RL and Radio Farda in Prague, has protested the threats. Foreign Minister Petr Macinka said he was summoning the Iranian ambassador to appear at the ministry over the matter, Czech media reported.
"Radio Farda, based in Prague, has been one of the few channels getting verified information to the Iranian population. Its importance was especially clear during the mass repression which the Iranian regime subjected its people to in the winter," Czech Foreign Ministry spokesman Adam Corgo told Czech Radio.
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Thomas Melia, a former senior State Department official focusing on human rights and now a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Democracy and Civil Society, said the threat should be taken seriously. He said Radio Farda personnel in Prague and elsewhere "need to heighten their security awareness," pointing to the Iranian state's actions targeting dissidents abroad.
Melia also said Tehran's threat underscored the importance of Radio Farda's work.
"It's a sign of how important the work of Farda is, that the Iranian regime is unhappy that the true facts and information and news reports that Farda broadcasts are getting to the Iranian people, and they want to cut that off," Melia said.
Christopher Walker, vice president of the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, said Iran takes the competition over information seriously and has invested heavily in its state information capabilities.
"The Iranian authorities take media and information competition very seriously," Walker said. "It's why they are understood to spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on their state information capabilities around the world."
Walker described the threats against international Persian-language outlets and other independent sources as part of what he called Tehran's "longstanding pattern of transnational censorship and repression."
He also placed the Iranian threats within a broader confrontation over information between authoritarian governments and Western democracies.
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Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of US Central Command, said Iran's hostility toward independent media was rooted in the nature of the clerical authorities who have held power since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
"At its core, the regime has always been against free press and anybody willing to speak, and they've been able to control that internally," Harward told RFE/RL. "Now, as they get more desperate, they're going to go after all the external pressure because it tells the truth about what a despotic regime it is," he said.
RFE/RL reports in 24 languages to 18 countries. It is a private, nonprofit American media corporation funded by a grant from the US Congress through the United States Agency for Global Media.