US appears to seize web domains for Iranian state media outlets, including PressTV

• Press TV is an English-language propaganda operation created by the Iranian government.
• The outlet, based in Tehran, was founded in 2007.
• It continues to operate on Facebook and Twitter.

The website for the Iranian government's English-language propaganda outlet had a new message for visitors for Tuesday: It had purportedly been taken down by Washington.

As of Tuesday evening, those who pulled up the website for the Tehran-based Press TV encountered an image informing them that the domain had been "seized by the United States government."

The same message was also displayed Tuesday on the websites for the Al-Alam News Network, an Iranian government Arabic-language TV channel, and Al-Masirah, a Yemeni TV channel associated with the rebel Houthi movement.

The Iranian state Fars News Agency, on Twitter, credited the US government with blocking the websites, calling it a "flagrant violation of the freedom of the press."

That claim has not been officially verified by the US. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is said to have carried out the seizure, did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

However, an unnamed US national security official, speaking to CNN, said dozens of Iranian websites were indeed seized as part of an effort to combat disinformation. The Associated Press also reported that claim.

Launched in 2007, the Tehran-based PressTV is the Islamic Republic's version of RT: a news-themed propaganda effort aimed at influencing English speakers in the West. It has regularly hosted Holocaust deniers and other fringe conspiracy theorists.

A recent article, published June 17, repeated baseless claims from Fox News' Tucker Carlson that the FBI had "helped organize, coordinate and orchestrate the January 6 attack on the Capitol."

Earlier this year, Google removed PressTV from YouTube. The outlet's content can still be found on Facebook and Twitter.

In 2019, a PressTV presenter with dual US-Iranian citizenship, Marzieh Hashemi, was detained for 10 days while traveling in the US as part of a broader espionage investigation.