Iran International TV, a private network, claimed on Saturday that it had been forced to close its London facilities on the advice of the UK authorities and cited an increase in threats from the Iranian regime, which has been suffering from protests.
The station says two of its senior journalists got death threats as a result of their reporting on the anti-regime rallies that first broke out in Iran five months ago.
Since the beginning of 2022, the MI5 espionage service and the Metropolitan Police in London have allegedly thwarted 15 schemes "to either kidnap or even assassinate" individuals deemed to be "enemies of the (Iranian) regime."
To guard against any vehicular attacks, the Met put up concrete barriers outside the Chiswick, west London, studios in November.The studios are situated in a business park that also has a number of foreign multinational corporations that employ thousands of people.
Mahmood Enayat, the general manager of the Persian-language network, claimed that after a guy was arrested last week outside the studios, the threats had gotten out of hand.
He remarked, "I cannot believe it has come to this," adding that the station's 24-hour broadcasts were still going on from its offices in Washington.
Enayat declared, "A foreign state has posed such a serious threat to the British public on British soil that we must leave. "Let's be clear, this is a threat to the entire British people as well as our TV station.The values of sovereignty, security, and free expression that the UK has traditionally upheld are being attacked, he added.
Following the arrest of Austrian national Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, 30, last Saturday, the decision was made late Friday, according to the station.
According to police, he was accused on Monday of "gathering information of a nature that is likely to be useful to a person conducting or preparing an act of terrorism."
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