The State Department quietly waived mandatory sanctions on Iran’s radical state broadcaster at two pivotal junctures this year, enabling the broadcaster to air the forced confessions of anti-regime protesters in January and, just this month, encourage and support assassination plots against President Donald Trump, his cabinet members, and his 20-year-old son Barron, according to nonpublic notifications transmitted to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) is the hardline regime’s chief propaganda organ, responsible for blasting Tehran’s virulent brand of radicalism to a domestic audience and supporters across the globe, including inside the United States. The IRIB has become instrumental to the regime’s survival in the past year, since nationwide protests inside Iran threatened the mullahs’ hold on power in the lead-up to the U.S.-led war. In recent weeks, the IRIB—which oversees a wide network of media including newspapers, websites, and social media channels—has been responsible for publishing a series of disturbing death threats against Trump, his wife Melania, and their son Barron. This includes an Aug. 23 video, since taken down, purporting to document both Melania and Barron’s movements as part of an assassination scheme that the Secret Service says it is actively monitoring.
But during this time, the State Department waived longstanding sanctions on the IRIB, permitting it to freely operate and access satellite services that are pivotal to its existence, the Free Beacon has learned. Crippling financial sanctions and taking steps to block the IRIB’s technical operations would make it hard for the regime mouthpiece to broadcast outside Iran, and would undermine its internal broadcasting and publishing operations as well.
In 1999 and 2003, the United States and its allies bombed state television in Belgrade and Baghdad, effectively shutting down state media for a time. The United States is not believed to have targeted Iranian state broadcasting in its current campaign.
The White House and State Department would not comment on the reasons for the waivers. Sources familiar with the situation suggested the waivers may be a naive effort—dating back to the Obama administration—to coax Iran towards a lasting agreement. The U.S. intelligence services, which rely heavily on the Israelis for intelligence about Iran, may also appreciate the ability to gauge the regime’s thinking by following state media.
The most recent iteration of the IRIB waiver was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 2 and transmitted privately to Congress a week later, according to a copy of the notification reviewed by the Free Beacon. An almost identical version was approved by Rubio on January 6 and transmitted to Congress shortly thereafter. Both documents maintain that it is “vital to the national security of the United States” to waive sanctions on the IRIB and allow it to conduct financial transactions for the provision of “ground connectivity” and telecommunications services. Without these waivers, the IRIB’s capabilities would be crippled by sanctions.
The July waiver was approved just over two months before the Trump administration unveiled Operation Economic Outcast, a vast and multi-pronged campaign to crush Iran’s financial networks through sanctions on the regime and its international enablers. That effort, however, could be undermined by an active IRIB waiver that continues to relieve pressure on one of the regime’s most powerful state organs.
While versions of the IRIB waivers issued throughout this year have been approved multiple times since 2013 across successive U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, the timing of the two most recent iterations is fuelling calls for the Trump administration to carefully reassess whether the policy actually remains “vital to U.S. national security interests”—particularly at a time when the IRIB is airing credible death threats against the president and his family.
“This is basically an autopilot waiver unless someone intervenes,” a former U.S. official with knowledge of IRIB sanctions told the Free Beacon, speaking only on background about the sensitive matter. “Once upon a time, someone told someone this was important to keep going. Has anyone asked whether that’s still true today?”
The IRIB controls radio, television, and news outlets across Iran and is the chief distributor of the regime’s radical anti-America, antisemitic, and pro-terror agitprop. The waiver essentially allows the IRIB to engage in financial transactions that, by and large, would otherwise be prohibited by America’s heavy sanctions regime, which specifically include the state broadcaster.
The waivers excuse the broadcaster from an array of American sanctions it’s been subjected to since 2013. These include mandatory congressional sanctions and executive orders linked to the IRIB’s role as a regime propaganda outlet. Congress determined that the IRIB had contributed to human-rights abuses by broadcasting forced confessions and sham trials, and in 2013, the Treasury Department sanctioned the IRIB under an executive order, finding that it restricted the free flow of information, censored media, and jammed foreign broadcasts.
Sanctions waivers for the IRIB have long been controversial. They stem from a secret 2013 deal between the Obama administration and the Iranian regime, which the Free Beacon reported on when it became public. The first Trump administration also came under scrutiny from its GOP allies, as well as Iranian dissidents, for approving the IRIB waiver in 2018, when Iranian protesters were again being violently suppressed by the regime. The Biden administration, too, landed in hot water for bypassing sanctions on the IRIB in 2024, at a time when Tehran’s press was celebrating Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror spree.
Still, the most recent approval of this policy by the State Department remains somewhat of a mystery amid the military conflict with Iran. The IRIB and its radical networks have helped sustain the hardline regime’s morale throughout the war, and they continue to foment terror across the globe. Earlier this year, at the height of Iran’s anti-regime protest movement, the IRIB televised nearly 100 coerced confessions from dissidents who were often tortured beforehand.
Both the White House and State Department have repeatedly expressed concerns over the IRIB’s death threats against Trump’s family and his senior officials, and vowed harsh reprisals for any assassination attempts. In March, the Justice Department successfully convicted an Iranian operative who traveled to the United States as part of a murder-for-hire plot against Trump.
The State Department would not provide a response to multiple Free Beacon inquiries about the IRIB waiver, the reason for granting it, or what will happen next time it comes up for renewal in the coming months. The White House also did not respond to similar questions, with both declining to provide a policy rationale for approving the waiver in both January and July. It is possible, however, that the July version was issued as a potential olive branch to Tehran as the Trump administration was working to enact a ceasefire that is now in tatters.
The IRIB’s now-viral Aug. 23 video publicized locations associated with Barron Trump and offered a $10 million bounty on his head. The Secret Service confirmed earlier in the week that it is aware of the threat. Barron is no longer physically attending classes on New York University’s Greenwich Village campus and is believed to be pursuing his undergraduate studies in Washington, under greater security.
“The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees,” Secret Service spokesman Nate Herring said in a statement. “Out of concern for operational security, we do not discuss matters of protective intelligence.”
Other recent IRIB videos, including several published in the wake of the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s death, purported to document Trump’s own movements and urged jihadist sympathizers outside Iran to exact retribution for Khamenei’s killing.
Given the expanding—and credible—threats posed by the IRIB’s radical networks, regional observers are recommending the Trump administration finally penalize the state broadcaster for attempting to recruit and reward would-be assassins.
“The U.S. should rescind the sanctions waiver that allows satellite broadcast service for IRIB. IRIB is not just a state news network. It is an arm of Iran’s security and intelligence services, which weaponize IRIB against the Iranian people and the U.S. and its allies,” said Jason Brodsky, policy director at the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran. “The broadcasting of bounty videos calling for the killings of President Trump and his family counts as incitement.”
Tehran, Brodsky added, “may be trying to recruit radicalized individuals who have access to the United States to carry out these kinds of terror plots. The Iranian regime followed this playbook in 2022 when the author Salman Rushdie was almost stabbed to death in New York by an individual motivated by Islamic Republic fatwas and bounties.”
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