The Fars News Agency is a

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency ma ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

managed by the

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is a multi-service primary branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces, Iranian Armed Forces. It was officially established by Ruhollah Khom ...

(IRGC), one of the three branches of the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces. While it describes itself as "Iran's leading independent news agency", it is widely described by Western news media to be a "semi-official" news agency of the

Government of Iran The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (), known simply as ''Nezam'' (), is the ruling State (polity), state and current political system in Iran, in power since the Iranian Revolution and fall of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. Its Const ...

. The Iran Disinformation Project calls Fars the "Spider Net of Lies and Deception" and the cornerstone of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' disinformation and propaganda campaign. Fars News' disinformation campaign "reaches across Iran's borders, spreading rumors and lies about dissidents, human rights, labor, political activists, and intellectuals." One propaganda technique is to consistently publish interviews with western pundits and analysts such as conspiracy theorist James Fetzer who echo Tehran's propaganda. The Fars News Agency .com domain has been blocked by sanctions applied by the US Treasury since 25 January 2020. On 15 September 2023, the

United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current United States federal executive departments, U.S. government departments. ...

added Fars News Agency to the

Office of Foreign Assets Control The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade economic sanctions, ...

(OFAC)'s

Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, also known as the SDN List, is a United States government sanctions/embargo measure targeting U.S.-designated terrorists, officials and beneficiaries of certain authoritarian regimes, a ...

History

Fars News Agency was founded in 2003. In addition to Persian reporting, the agency also provides news in English, Turkish,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, and

Dari Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...

. Fars formerly published all content on its website under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Controversial stories

Interview with Egyptian president

In June 2012, Fars released an interview with Egyptian President

Mohamed Morsi Mohamed Mohamed Morsi Eissa Al-AyyatThe spellings of his first and last names vary. survey of 14 news organizations plus Wikipedia in July 2012 Egypt–Israel peace treaty The Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., United States, on 26 March 1979, following the 1978 Camp David Accords. The Egypt–Israel treaty was signed by Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minist ...

. Morsi later disputed the authenticity of the interview. Fars responded by providing what it said was audio of the interview. Arabic newscaster

Al Arabiya Arabiya (, transliterated: '; meaning "The Arabic One" or "The Arab One") is a Saudi state-owned international Arabic news television channel. It is based in Riyadh and is a subsidiary of MBC Group. The channel is a flagship of the media c ...

quoted unnamed experts who said it was not Morsi's voice.

Reposted story by ''The Onion''

In September 2012, the agency picked up a story from ''

The Onion ''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is currently based in Chicago, but originated as a weekly print publication ...

'', a satirical newspaper, about a supposed survey showing "an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans would rather vote for

Iranian President The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran () is the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the second highest-ranking official, after the supreme leader. The first election was held in 1980 and was won by Abulhassan Banisa ...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...

than

U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

in the upcoming U.S. elections". The Iranian version copied the original word-for-word, even including a made-up quote from a fictional

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

resident who says he would rather go to a baseball game with Ahmadinejad because "he takes national defense seriously, and he'd never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does." Fars News Agency later apologized for its mistake, but claimed that a majority of Americans would prefer anyone outside of the American political system to President Obama and American statesmen.

Time machine story

In April 2013, the agency carried a story claiming a 27-year-old Iranian scientist had invented a time machine that allowed people to see into the future. A few days later the story was removed, and replaced with a story quoting an Iranian government official that no such device had been registered.

Alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda reports

In January 2014, Fars posted a series of articles that suggested U.S. security policy was being driven by an "alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda". The report said that proof was found in a

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation �СБ, ФСБ России (FSB) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterin ...

report carried out by

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...

. The report said that the United States government had been secretly run by a "shadow government" of space aliens since 1945.

Salman Rushdie fatwa

In February 2016, Fars was one of 40 Iranian news agencies that pledged money toward the bounty against

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( ; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern wor ...

in regards to

The Satanic Verses controversy The ''Satanic Verses'' controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Indian author, Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses''. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Ver ...

. Fars promised $30,000 for the killing of Rushdie.

Yemenite Jews

In November 2020, the Agency sparked controversy after it shared an article by '' Kayhan'' editor Hossein Shariatmadari denying the Holocaust and saying that the "real Holocaust" was against Yemenite Christians by the Jewish

Himyarite Kingdom Himyar was a polity in the southern highlands of Yemen, as well as the name of the region which it claimed. Until 110 BCE, it was integrated into the Qataban, Qatabanian kingdom, afterwards being recognized as an independent kingdom. According ...

in 524 CE. Critics denounced the article as an

anti-Semitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

piece seeking to dehumanize Jews and downplay the brutality of the Holocaust.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2003 establishments in Iran Organizations established in 2003 News agencies based in Iran Iranian news websites Creative Commons-licensed websites Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Iranian propaganda organisations Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List Iranian entities subject to U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctions