Iraqi govt. bans Saudi MBC channel for disrespecting resistance figures
The Iraqi government has revoked the license of the Saudi-owned MBC television channel in the country and ordered the broadcaster to close its bureau in Baghdad after it aired a report disrespectful to prominent figures of resistance groups in the region.
On Saturday, officials at Iraq’s Communications and Media Commission placed the ban on the Dubai-based MBC channel and said the measure was taken over the network's repeated violations of Iraqi broadcasting regulations, and its attacks on heroic resistance leaders, anti-terror commanders and martyrs.
“All necessary legal measures have been taken and the channel’s operations in Iraq are suspended,” the commission announced in a statement.
The MBC report clubbed the Axis of Resistance - Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas, Yemen’s Ansarullah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq – and their leaders with terrorists like Osama bin Laden.
Named in the report were Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut last month, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran in late July.
It also cited Haniyeh’s successor Yahya Sinwar, who organized Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (Storm) inside southern Israeli-occupied territories on October 7 last year.
The report broadcast by the Saudi television channel referred to the martyred commanders and leaders of the Axis of Resistance as "terrorists".
A security source told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that between 400 and 500 people made their way into the Baghdad studios of the Saudi broadcaster after midnight.
The report comes at a time when resistance groups – most notably Hamas and Hezbollah, but also their allies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria – have been launching anti-Israeli operations in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for more than a year.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has been conducting operations against sensitive targets across the occupied territories since October 7 last year, when the Israeli regime began a ferocious war on the Gaza Strip.
The Iraqi coalition has also carried out retaliatory attacks against the US occupation bases across Iraq and neighboring Syria over Washington’s unbridled political, military, and intelligence support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.