Leader at Anti-Iranian-Regime Media Outlet has U.S. Government Ties
Iran International General Manager, Mahmood Enayat, has several links to the United States government
Iran International, a prominent anti-regime media outlet that claims to be the most watched news channel in Iran, touts its editorial independence and lack of ties to any government.
However, emails released by the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal Mahmood Enayat, General Manager of Iran International, has previously undisclosed ties to the United States government.
In a series of emails from Spring 2018, Enayat was dispatched by the State Department to press Twitter on its decision not to suspend certain accounts that posted hateful content towards the cofounders of a State Department-funded organization critical of the Iranian regime.
A State Department employee “escalated” this issue at the Department after Twitter only took action against a portion of the accounts, and encouraged Enayat to help get the organization verified on Twitter, writing that Enayat should let them know “what [he] might need from State on that.”
Enayat’s links to the U.S. government also include his time at the Small Media Foundation, the organization he founded in 2011 that “works to support the free flow of information in politically closed societies,” with a particular focus on Iran. Small Media has received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the tune of over $2 million. The funding came in the form of three separate Cooperative Agreement grants, which are “characterized by extended involvement between recipient and agency.”
Enayat was also director of the Iran Media Program at the University of Pennsylvania, which was "formed through a grant from USAID in 2010” and “ended when the grant funding ran out around the end of 2014," said Julie Sloane, Director of Communications at the university’s Annenberg School for Communication. As director, Enayat was “involved in giving general research direction on the grant,” Sloane added. The program produced several regime-critical reports on Iran's media and social media landscape.
Moreover, Enayat appears to have been invited to the State Department’s 2017 Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Implementers’ Conference, organized by the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office of Assistance Coordination (NEA/AC). Enayat’s name and role as Director of the Small Media Foundation appear on a guest list circulated by the State Department in September 2017, with Small Media listed as an “Implementer” that works with MEPI.
Iran International is a Persian-language, 24/7 television channel that broadcasts free-to-air over satellite, as well as via radio and on its website. The outlet has been criticized for its financial ties to the government of Saudi Arabia, with the channel’s parent company owned by a Saudi national. It has also faced scrutiny for its alleged promotion of forces for regime change, as exemplified by its spotlighting the eldest Shah scion Reza Pahlavi and coverage of a 2018 rally held by Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-regime leftist and Islamist organization derided by critics as a cult and a terrorist group. The outlet briefly relocated its studio operations to the United States in February 2023 citing a warning from UK authorities that it was "under threat from Iranian agents." In September 2023, the outlet resumed broadcasting from London.
Before founding Small Media, Enayat researched internet filtering at Oxford University's Internet Institute in the late 2000s. Around the same time he covered Iran for BBC’s Persian service before becoming Iran country director for the BBC World Service Trust. In 2011, Enayat founded Small Media, where he worked as the organization’s director until 2018, and around the same time held a senior role at the USAID-funded Iran Media Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Enayat joined Iran International at least as early as October 2018 (we couldn't find a precise start date) as head of its digital department, before becoming its general manager in January 2019.
Enayat and Iran International did not respond to requests for comment.
The State Department dispatch
On March 28, 2018, an apparent State Department employee contacted Enayat regarding the decision by Twitter (now known as ‘X’) not to suspend certain accounts that posted personal information and hateful remarks about Mariam Memarsadeghi and Akbar Atri, the couple that founded the E-Collaborative for Civic Education (ECCE) and the Tavaana E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society, organizations that describe themselves as promoting civic education in Iran. Memarsadeghi and Atri have worked on U.S. government-funded initiatives for years and advocate for sustained sanctioning of Iran and regime change.
The State Department employee asked Enayat if he could “assist ECCE and reach out to Twitter on this issue.” Enayat responded that he would “follow up with Mariam and Akbar directly,” and subsequently wrote to Memarsadeghi that “[w]e have just filed a report to our contacts at Twitter” seeking the permanent suspension of an account for their tweets targeting Memarsadeghi and other activists.
After Twitter responded and, according to Enayat, ignored the tweets he flagged “related to hateful content,” he subsequently “pushed back on their response,” and bemoaned social media platforms being “used by the regime supporters to spread hate and target Iranian activists.” Enayat wrote that this issue “requires serious attention by us and the [U.S. Government].”
Memarsadeghi wrote back to Enayat, cc’ing a redacted email address likely belonging to a State Department employee, asking “[w]hat can State do to get Twitter's attention? Surely [the National Security Council] and others must have a direct channel of communication.”
In response, a State Department employee wrote: “Concurrent with Mahmood's efforts, I escalated this for our leadership as well. I will keep you posted on who from the [U.S. government] will weigh in on this issue.”
The State Department official also recommended that Enayat “work to verify the Tavaana and TavaanaTech accounts with Twitter,” and let them know “what [he] might need from State on that,” confirming that the individual who first contacted Enayat regarding the allegedly hateful tweets was a State Department employee.
On April 4, 2018, Enayat informed Memarsadeghi that the Twitter account they reported had ultimately been suspended.
Given the redactions, it's difficult to tell which State Department employee or employees were involved in the effort to suspend the accounts targeting Memarsadeghi and other activists. However, two former State Department employees were cc'd in an email chain preceding the Department’s March 28 email to Enayat: Kiarash Ehfad, whose LinkedIn says he was a Team Lead at the State Department from October 2007 to October 2019, and Zakieh Shirafkan, whose LinkedIn says she was a Media Analyst and New Media Consultant at the State Department from September 2013 to March 2019.
Ehfad and Shirafkan did not respond to requests for comment.
Enayat was again contacted by an apparent U.S. government employee in November 2018, regarding a sudden drop in Tavaana’s Instagram following and engagement. The official wrote to Enayat and Holly Kilroy, Executive Director at the Center for Digital Resilience (CDR), a nonprofit focused on digital security around the world, and formerly Senior Programme Manager at Small Media (Kilroy departed Small Media in May 2018). Kilroy was also cc’d in Memarsadeghi’s April 10, 2018 response to Enayat, at which point she was still working at Small Media.
Memarsadeghi, Atri, and Kilroy did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier ties between the U.S. government and Enayat
Years before the State Department dispatched Enayat to help Memarsadeghi and Atri, the U.S. government was bankrolling Enayat's work.
The first USAID grant to Small Media was approximately $1.1 million and ran from September 27, 2012 through September 26, 2014; the second award was approximately $600,000 and ran from September 16, 2013 through March 31, 2015; the third grant was also approximately $600,000 and ran from July 1, 2013 through March 31, 2015.
Small Media has published a number of research reports on the Iranian digital ecosystem in collaboration with other U.S. government-funded entities. For instance, Small Media produced a June 2016 report titled #IranVotes: Political Discourse on Iranian Twitter During the 2016 Parliamentary Elections in collaboration with Harvard University’s Internet Monitor, a research project focused on Internet content controls funded by the U.S. State Department. Likewise, Small Media published a 2015 report on internet governance in Iran (in which Enayat is quoted extensively) with the support of the Internet Policy Observatory (IPO), created by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication with funding from a State Department grant.
Enayat resigned as a director of the Small Media Foundation in August 2018, but remained a director of Small Media Consultancy Ltd. until its dissolution in March 2020.
Following Enayat’s departure, Adrienne van Heteren became the head of Small Media, about a year after being appointed a director in August 2017. Van Heteren serves on multiple board committees at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a nonprofit funded in part by the U.S. Department of State, as well as the European Commission and the governments of the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Norway. Van Heteren previously held senior positions at USAID, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), the BBC, and elsewhere, and worked as director of development for B92 – a Belgrade-based radio station funded by USAID, the European Commission, and various European governments – during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.
Van Heteren did not respond to a request for comment.
Organizational ties between Iran International and governments
It's not just Enayat. Several staffers at Iran International have ties to the United States government. They've worked for Voice of America and Radio Farda, which are run and funded by the U.S. government, respectively. One staffer formerly worked for the U.S. government-funded Freedom House, an American non-profit that works to “promote democratic change, with a focus on political rights and civil liberties,” per its website. Another staffer worked for NATO.
Beyond the connections of its staff, Memarsadeghi told government officials that Iran International was open to airing her organizations' U.S. government-funded and tailored content. Broadcasting on Iran International could be an alternative to using social media for her organizations' messaging, she said.
"One option is to not have social media,” Memarsadeghi told the Global Engagement Center, an arm of the State Department, at a meeting. "TV Station Iran International wants to air the documentaries. We can switch to a broadcasting option and only put out our own content, like the documentary series, PSA videos, etc."
Iran International has come under scrutiny in the past for alleged ties to the government of Saudi Arabia and the alleged influence of the Kingdom on the channel’s coverage. The outlet’s parent company, Volant Media, has a director and majority shareholder named Adel Abdulkarim Alabdulkarim, a Saudi national with alleged links to Saudi executives connected to the Kingdom’s royal court, according to an October 2018 article in the Guardian. Alabdulkarim is also a director and secretary of Global Media Circulating, the entity that holds the broadcasting license for Iran International.
Volant was formerly majority-owned by Saudi national Fahad Ibrahim Aldeghither, reportedly the former chairman of the telecommunications company Zain Saudi. Aldeghither’s control of Volant ended in 2018.
The Guardian piece further reported that, according to an anonymous source, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was the force behind Iran International. The anonymous source also claimed Saud al-Qahtani, bin Salman’s “information tsar,” was involved in funding the outlet.
According to a source cited in the Guardian report, Saudi Arabia provided $250 million (approximately £197 million) to assist in the outlet’s 2017 launch. Iran International does not run online or television advertising, and parent company Volant Media reported operating losses of approximately £86 million and £60.3 million in 2022 and 2021, respectively, raising questions about the source of funds covering these shortfalls. Volant’s costs dwarf its reported income, with the company posting gross revenue of £474,000 and approximately £1.7 million in 2022 and 2021, respectively.
Saudi Arabia’s sway over Iran International was further evidenced by the Kingdom’s agreement to “tone down” the outlet’s critical coverage of Iran, per a March 2023 Wall Street Journal report, citing unnamed officials from both countries. The alleged concession on the part of Saudi Arabia came as the result of negotiations mediated by China that led to an unprecedented deal to restore relations between the rival Middle East powers. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that some journalists at Iran International thought the outlet’s management pushed a pro-Saudi, anti-Iran editorial stance.
Iran International is among the most popular sources of news in Iran, with a 2021 GAMAAN survey reporting 33% daily viewership of the outlet among respondents, with over half of those surveyed also saying they trusted Iran International “a lot” or “to some extent.”
The same type of investigation should be carried out on GAMAAN (run by Ammar Maleki and Pooyan Tamimi Arab) and their so-called "survey" on Iran that you quote at the end of your article.