BBC staff are up in arms after the Corporation ‘did a deal’ with the Iranian regime which allowed its journalists to cover the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – but banned them from broadcasting to people inside the country.
The BBC sent two separate teams to Iran.
However, none of their reports were aired to Iranians living under the brutal regime, which is said to have slaughtered more than 30,000 people on just two days of protest in January.
Under the arrangement, correspondents were permitted to report from Tehran only on the understanding that none of their material could be broadcast by BBC Persian, the BBC's Persian-language service for audiences inside Iran.
Ex-pat BBC Persian journalists in London say they no longer believe they are able to practise free and independent journalism.
Several who spoke to the JC say they have been left feeling abandoned by the organisation.
"It’s disgusting. Instead of backing us, the BBC appeared to accommodate the Iranian government's wishes.
"They did a deal with a bloodthirsty regime. This is a terrible betrayal," one said.
The BBC admitted on air that it had made an arrangement with the Iranian government.
On 4 July, during BBC News at Ten, presenter Ben Brown told viewers that the BBC's Senior International Correspondent, Nawal Al-Maghafi, had been reporting from Tehran "on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC Persian Service."
The JC has been told that BBC News Newsgathering sent a team primarily for its English-language outlets, including domestic television and radio.
Meanwhile, BBC World Service Languages deployed a team with one correspondent and two producers.
The material was made available across multiple language services—but not to BBC Persian, the service whose audience was most directly affected by events in Iran.
Under the restrictions, the BBC in Iran was largely limited to showing footage of the Supreme Leader’s funeral broadcast by Iranian state television and other material available outside the country.
The BBC insisted that BBC News Persian reaches one in four people in Iran with “independent and impartial news, despite being banned in the country”.
Crowds gather in Tehran on the second day of Ali Khamenei's funeral (Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images
But several BBC Persian journalists feel the funeral arrangement prevented the service from carrying out independent journalism.
One told the JC: “It effectively advanced the Iranian regime's propaganda strategy by allowing the BBC to report internationally, using the BBC’s brand to echo the regime’s propaganda, especially in the Middle East, while at the same time boosting the Iranian regime’s strategy to prevent Iranians accessing free information.”
They went on: “The Islamic Republic has long regarded BBC Persian as an instrument of British influence and has designated the service a hostile organisation.
“For years, the Iranian authorities have waged a campaign of intimidation against its journalists.
“Ex-pat BBC Persian staff cannot safely return to Iran, where they risk arrest and prosecution because of their work.”
The BBC confirmed to the Jewish Chronicle that it accepted the condition imposed by the Iranian authorities, and insisted it had been “transparent”.
The Corporation said: "We are transparent with audiences in our coverage about the restrictions put on our reporting, stating on air that we reported on condition that none of the material was used on BBC News Persian. Similar restrictions applied to all international media organisations operating in Iran."
The BBC has frequently reported that its Persian journalists in the UK have faced death threats.
Their relatives in Iran have been arrested, interrogated and subjected to intimidation, while ordinary Iranians who speak to BBC Persian risk detention and prosecution.
In 2017, Iran froze the assets of hundreds of BBC Persian journalists and contributors and confiscated property belonging to some staff and their families.
One journalist said: "Our families have been arrested, our assets frozen, our parents' pensions stopped, and we have received death threats because of our work for the BBC."
On the funeral they added: "The organisation sent journalists to produce content for other language services, particularly Urdu, Pashto and Arabic, which the Iranian authorities would have wanted to reach, while sidelining BBC Persian despite our expertise and our audience in Iran.
"We asked for a meeting with senior management to discuss the decision and to understand whether, during negotiations to secure access for what may have been the BBC's largest reporting deployment to Iran in years, the safety and ongoing persecution of BBC Persian journalists had also been raised with the Iranian authorities. We were told that no meeting would take place."
The Iranian authorities have claimed millions attended Ali Khamenei's six-day funeral.
However, images from the funeral showed visible gaps in parts of the crowds, while many regional leaders did not attend the ceremonies.
The JC reviewed the BBC's coverage across language services aimed at regions where Tehran seeks to project influence.
BBC Urdu, which serves audiences in Pakistan, and BBC Arabic, both ran live coverage of the funeral, providing rolling updates throughout the ceremonies in a manner similar in scope to Iranian state broadcasters.
Mourners on streets of Tehran on Monday (Getty Images)Getty Images
The BBC's reporting from inside Iran has attracted criticism in recent months, but coverage of Khamenei's funeral has proved particularly contentious.
One BBC Persian journalist insisted that the teams deployed to Tehran focused almost exclusively on the funeral ceremonies while failing to provide the broader context surrounding Khamenei's death.
"There was no apparent effort to speak to the families of those killed by the regime six months earlier, or to members of the opposition, to provide the wider context surrounding the conflict and Khamenei's death,” the journalist said.
The criticism refers to the nationwide anti-government protests that were violently suppressed in January 2026.
Many relatives of those victims publicly celebrated Khamenei's death, holding him ultimately responsible for the crackdown.
The journalist questioned whether the restrictions imposed by the Iranian authorities made balanced reporting possible.
"If the BBC's access in Iran was so restricted that it could not report those perspectives, why send teams there at all if they were unable to produce sufficiently balanced coverage in line with the BBC's Editorial Guidelines?
"And if those voices could not be heard from inside Iran, why were BBC platforms not balancing the coverage by interviewing opposition figures and other contributors outside the country, for example from London?"
The JC understands that this is not the first time the BBC has negotiated with the Iranian authorities over the terms of its reporting inside Iran.
According to multiple BBC sources, several reporting trips to Iran in recent months were conducted under the same restriction preventing material gathered by BBC correspondents from being used by BBC Persian.
Senior BBC executives have held private meetings with Iranian officials regarding the corporation's operations in the country, the JC has been told.
Those discussions have not previously been disclosed publicly.
The BBC said that Nawal Al-Maghafi and chief foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet reported for “multiple BBC News outlets in the UK and across our language services’ on the funeral ‘and the reaction in the country”.
The BBC said in a statement: “Reporting from Iran is an ongoing challenge and our correspondents are rarely allowed access. We have reported impartially and provided insightful analysis from Iran, covering the regime’s crackdown on protesters earlier in the year, including in our most recent reports, as well as conducting a challenging interview with the Mayor of Bandar Abbas, accessing the Iranian side of the Strait of Hormuz, and covering the funeral of the former Supreme Leader in Tehran for audiences in the UK and around the world."
The BBC's acceptance of the Iranian authorities' restrictions comes against the backdrop of a years-long campaign by the Islamic Republic against Persian-language journalists based in Britain.
UK authorities have repeatedly warned of Iranian plots targeting dissidents and media figures on British soil. Over the past year, several Iranian journalists living in the UK have been the targets of alleged surveillance and assassination plots.
Last week, two Romanian nationals were jailed for carrying out what prosecutors described as a "targeted" knife attack on an Iranian television journalist in London "on behalf of the Iranian state".
In May, a Greek national appeared in court accused of spying on a London-based Iranian journalist, allegedly using a covert camera concealed inside a sock to conduct surveillance.
The BBC said it continues to support its Persian service staff.
"The organisation takes the threats, harassment and abuse directed at our BBC News Persian colleagues incredibly seriously. We have raised their case multiple times with the United Nations," a spokesperson said.
Asked about staff requesting a meeting over the funeral arrangement with Iran, the BBC said senior management ‘regularly’ meet with BBC News Persian staff, adding: ‘We do not comment on internal meetings.”
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