The UK government has come under fire for failing to tackle an Iranian TV company registered in Britain for the past 15 years, despite links to the banned channel Press TV.
HispanTV, focused on the Spanish-speaking world, is part of state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (Irib) and has faced accusations of acting as Iran's “long arm of hate”.
Its UK arm was this week reported to police under national security laws by a senior British politician. Alicia Kearns, the UK's shadow Home Office Minister, told The National she had complained to the Met Police that HispanTV was allegedly breaching the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.
They are cut-outs of the Iranian state
Alicia Kearns
Records show the current and former owners of the UK entity had close ties with Press TV, Iran’s English-language state broadcaster, which broadcast from London studios until 2012 when its licence was revoked by the UK’s media regulator, Ofcom.
According to Companies House, HispanTV has been registered as a business in the UK since January 2011, with its current address given as a unit on an industrial estate in north-west London.
Seyedmehdi Mirtaleb, who is listed as the director and majority shareholder, was an executive producer at Press TV in London from 2009 until 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile. The 48-year-old is listed as a British citizen on Companies House but in a previous entry his nationality was given as Iranian.
The records show that HispanTV was originally registered by a Hamid Khairoldin, 68, but he resigned as a director and gave up his ownership of the company in 2014. When PressTV was registered as a company in the UK, Mr Khairoldin was listed as a director from 2007 to 2010.
Ofcom told The National that HispanTV has never been licensed to broadcast in the UK and so it had not acted on its presence as a company. Press TV's licence to broadcast was removed by Ofcom in 2012 after it failed to pay a £100,000 fine imposed for broadcasting an interview with imprisoned journalist Maziar Bahari, which the regulator said had been conducted under duress.
Ofcom also said it had breached several broadcasting licence rules over editorial control of the channel. Shortly before PressTV was banned, it shared a Companies House-registered address with HispanTV in a west London office block. The umbrella Irib is sanctioned by the US and EU, while some of its directors were listed by the UK for overseeing the programming decisions that led to human rights violations.
HispanTV's global remit is broadcasting news, documentaries, movies and Iranian films 24 hours a day. Its activities in the UK are unclear. It does not appear to make programmes or broadcast from the UK, but its footprint is aimed at Latin American nations. The UK is a global media hub where the industry clusters for business and talent, as well as broadcast assets.
When The National visited its current registered UK address, the unit was occupied by another business which said it had never heard of HispanTV. Businesses in nearby units said the lock-up had previously been empty for a number of years.
'Iranian cut-out'
Since a change in the law this summer, the UK requires anyone carrying out political influence activities in the UK at the direction of any foreign power to register their arrangements. The law came into effect in 2025 under the National Security Act to increase transparency and protect the UK from covert state-backed interference.
“There is no question that it is not conducive to national security to have these types of outlets operating in the UK – they are cut-outs of the Iranian state,” Ms Kearns told The National.
The Tory politician, whose brief includes national security, said she has previously raised the presence of media linked to Iran and its allies with both the police and government.
Ms Kearns recently raised the issue of the Houthi TV station Al Masirah TV in the House of Commons. The company's presence in the UK was revealed by The National earlier this year and raised concerns over alleged illicit funding, visa facilitation and intelligence gathering on political rivals.
“I feel like I'm sitting in this limbo where I'm screaming and shouting and neither the police nor the government are doing anything at all,” she said. “It's preposterous. We’ve got to get them shut down. What I do not understand is how the government doesn't understand these cut-outs are risks to our society.”
Mr Mirtaleb and Mr Khairoldin have been approached for comment.
Presidential support
HispanTV'S UK arm was founded with £1 in share capital and has filed limited accounts under rules for small businesses that exempt it from providing details of its turnover. It has been listed as dormant since 2012 and its accounts state its assets have remained at £1 throughout its existence.
HispanTV's Spanish-language service went on air from Tehran in October 2011 and was officially launched by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in January the following year.
“The new channel will limit the ground for supremacy of dominance-seekers,” Mr Ahmadinejad said during a ceremony marking the inauguration. “It will be a means for better ties between people and governments of Iran and Spanish-speaking nations.”
The channel was launched on the back of Iran’s attempts to establish strong commercial, political and strategic links with South America at a time when it had been hit with tough sanctions for its nuclear programme. For a time it had a base in Madrid, but it was closed down in 2013 by the Spanish government as part of broader EU sanctions against Iran.
In a report earlier this year, HispanTV was described by the Anti-Defamation League as the “leading platform peddling anti-Semitic hate and disseminating anti-Israel prejudice and incitement across Latin America and the wider Spanish‑speaking world”.
The study found that HispanTV has significantly ramped up its rhetoric over the last two years through its satellite, cable and live-streaming broadcasting, as well as its website. It has more than a quarter of a million followers on social media.
An earlier ADL study called HispanTV: “The Iranian Regime’s Long Arm of Hate in Latin America.”
Permissive environment
United Against Nuclear Iran (Uani) says HispanTV “serves as an arm of Iran’s public diplomacy outreach to Latin America, a region in which Iran has invested significant political capital”.
“The UK continues to harbour a permissive environment for these media arms of the Iranian regime,” Jason Brodsky, Uani’s policy director, told The National. “HispanTV is part of the Irib, which is under US sanctions for its ties to the Iranian intelligence services.
“PressTV has those ties as well. Former Irib executives are under UK sanctions. At a time when the Islamic Republic is plotting terror on UK soil, the UK government should be cracking down on these networks' freedom of movement on British soil. There must be a reassessment as to how these networks are using UK soil as a platform.”
The continued presence of HispanTV in the UK comes amid an escalation of attacks which Iran is believed to be behind.
These include arson attacks on Jewish volunteer ambulances, a synagogue and Iran International TV, a broadcaster critical of the regime. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by a group named Harakat Ashab Al Yamin Al Islamia, or Ashab Al Yamin. It is widely believed to be a creation of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).