Sayyed Ahmad Sadat said the Zionist regime of Israel has provoked a “media war” on the Islamic Republic of Iran which is being carried out by the United States, Britain, France and some Persian Gulf countries.
In a blatant assault on freedom of speech, the European satellite provider Eutelsat took al-Alam off air. In recent months, Eutelsat's Israeli-French CEO Michel De Rosen has stepped up his campaign by appealing to major satellite providers in Europe and Asia to silence Iranian media. Under pressure from Eutelsat, Atlantic Bird 7 stopped airing al-Alam programs on March 1st.
Sadat said al-Alam was successful in winning over millions of viewers throughout the world, a development that worried the West.
As for incessant attacks by Eutelsat managers against Iranian satellite channels, he said, “Western countries, the Zionist regime and their allies are sowing discord in the region by supporting terrorist groups and inciting religious and sectarian hatred. The success al-Alam has pulled off in appealing to viewers has helped the channel make a name for itself as a medium which shines the spotlight on the conspiracies of the Zionists and Western powers,” he added.
Sadat further said, “On the issue of Palestine, we have been successful in defending Palestinian rights, and this has come as almost all Arab countries have banned their media from discussing the issue and revealing Israeli crimes”.
Slapping a ban on expression of views which disagree with Zionists and Western powers is nothing new, and news outlets such as al-Alam have encountered numerous problems for airing their programs before. Even before the dawn of the Arab Spring, al-Alam channel was being jammed.