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Outlet profile

Tasnim News Agency

Iranian IRGC state-controlled

Owned byFounded and controlled by commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); co-founders Hamidreza Moghaddamfar and Majid Gholizadeh, both IRGC officers, remain executives. Also linked to the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization (IIDO).
FundingFunded through the IRGC and Iranian state budget; no significant commercial advertising or subscription revenue reported.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Tasnim News Agency was founded in 2012 by two IRGC commanders, Hamidreza Moghaddamfar and Majid Gholizadeh, who have remained in leadership roles. The outlet describes its mission as defending the Islamic Revolution against what it calls foreign media propaganda and providing coverage of Iran and political Islam. It quickly became the largest IRGC-affiliated media outlet in Iran, operating in Persian and English. Tasnim has a documented record of publishing forced confessions from protesters and crowdsourcing the identities of demonstrators arrested during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, actions that drew international condemnation. In September 2023, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Tasnim under Executive Order 13553—alongside Fars News and Press TV—for being owned or controlled by the IRGC and for assisting regime repression. Iran ranks 177 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' 2023 World Press Freedom Index, a context that reflects the environment in which Tasnim operates. The outlet consistently reflects hardline Iranian government positions, is sharply critical of Western and Israeli policy, and amplifies Iranian military and diplomatic narratives. Its credibility is rated as low by independent media monitors due to state propaganda, poor sourcing, and promotion of misleading claims.

Sources

  1. Tasnim News Agency – Media Bias/Fact Check
  2. Tasnim News Agency – Wikipedia
  3. Tasnim News Agency – UANI (United Against Nuclear Iran)
  4. Treasury Sanctions Iranian Officials and Companies Connected to Repression – U.S. Dept. of the Treasury
  5. Tasnim News Agency – Iran Monitor
  6. Tasnim Launches 'Trump Check' to Examine US President's Claims on Iran
  7. Tasnim News Agency – OpenSanctions
  8. US sanctions Iranian media for links to terrorist IRGC – Jerusalem Post

Profile compiled 2026-07-27; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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