Iranian TV channel halts London broadcasts after threats

LONDON: The private network Iran International TV said on Saturday that it had been forced on UK police advice to shut down its London studios, blaming a surge in threats from the protest-hit regime in Iran.

The station has been giving extensive coverage to anti-regime demonstrations that erupted in Iran five months ago, and says two of its senior journalists received death threats in response to their reporting. London´s Metropolitan police force said that working with the MI5 spy agency, since the start of 2022, it had foiled 15 plots “to either kidnap or even kill” people seen as “enemies of the (Iranian) regime”.

The Met installed concrete barriers outside the studios in Chiswick, west London, to prevent any attack by vehicle.

The studios are located in a business park that also hosts several foreign multinationals, housing thousands of staff in total.