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Iran: Ban on satellite TV a ‘failure’, regime official admits

NCRI – The Iranian regime has failed in its bid to ban people from watching satellite TV channels, a regime official has admitted.

Despite a 1994 law making satellite dishes illegal, up to 70 per cent of families have them and their use is increasing, state-run TV network official Fardin Ali-Khah said.

He told the state-run Rasanews on July 4: “At first only upper-class people used satellite dishes. However this has now become common across all sectors of society.

“This issue was examined in the parliament from two points of view. Some considered it as a cultural attack and others as a national and social security issue.

“Some were trying to prohibit the use of satellite dishes in Iran. But others believed that technology cannot be prevented and claimed that the society must be barred from using satellite dishes. Finally in 1994, parliament passed a law on forbidding the use of satellite dishes.

“Although their use is now forbidden, they can be seen everywhere. Statistics show that the use of satellite dishes has never declined, and currently there is 50 to 70 per cent use of satellite dishes in Iranian families.”

Jamming satellite signals and other methods to prevent their use had also failed, and the government now needed to increase its spending on the issue to counter the negative effects of satellite channels, Ali-Khah insisted.