Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) is the official news agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran and one of the principal state-controlled media organisations in the country. It was founded on 13 November 1934 as Pars Agency by the Foreign Ministry of Iran during the reign of Reza Shah (according to IRNA’s institutional history), and assumed its current institutional identity in 1981 following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. IRNA operates as a multilingual news platform, publishing in approximately ten languages with around 60 domestic offices in Iran and around 30 foreign offices, and is institutionally linked to the Iran Cultural and Press Institute, whose portfolio includes the daily newspaper Iran, Iran Daily (English), Al-Vefagh (Arabic), Iran Varzeshi (sports) and Iran Sepid (Braille edition).

Media assets

News agency: IRNA, publishing in Persian, English, Arabic and other languages, with around 60 domestic and 30 foreign offices

Iran Cultural and Press Institute portfolio (institutionally linked to IRNA): Iran (Persian-language daily, widely identified as the government’s official newspaper), Iran Daily (English-language daily), Al-Vefagh (Arabic-language daily), Iran Varzeshi (sports), Iran Sepid (Braille edition)

Ownership and governance

IRNA is structurally and operationally distinct from IRIB and IIDO in one important respect: IRNA does not fall under the direct constitutional appointment authority of the Supreme Leader of Iran. Where IRIB’s head is appointed by the Supreme Leader under Article 175 of the Iranian Constitution and IIDO’s director is appointed by direct supreme-leader decree, IRNA operates under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and its Managing Director is appointed by the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, who is in turn appointed by the President with parliamentary confirmation. The current Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance is Seyyed Abbas Salehi, who took office on 21 August 2024 in the cabinet of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Salehi previously served in the same role from 2017 to 2021 under President Hassan Rouhani, and is regarded as a moderate figure within the Iranian political spectrum.

The most significant institutional development at IRNA during the review period has been the leadership transition associated with the 2024 change of government. Ali Naderi, the ultraconservative figure appointed Managing Director of IRNA in October 2021 by then Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili under President Ebrahim Raisi, was succeeded in September 2024 by Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, who was introduced as the new Managing Director by Minister Salehi at a handover ceremony on 22 September 2024. Jaberi-Ansari has subsequently framed IRNA’s institutional mission in terms of “reflecting realities comprehensively” in IRNA’s own English-language reporting from April 2025, a formulation that contrasts with Naderi’s October 2021 description of IRNA as a news agency of the political system [Nezam]. The structural features of state ownership, ministerial supervision, absence of an editorial firewall and absence of audited financial disclosure have remained unchanged across the transition.

There is no independent governing board or supervisory council exercising arm’s-length authority over IRNA’s editorial production, and the SMM 2025/26 review identified no public-domain accountability mechanism that would permit external scrutiny of governance or editorial standards.

Source of funding and budget

IRNA is funded through a combination of direct state allocations and limited commercial income from advertising and content syndication, and does not publish audited financial statements, annual reports or detailed budget breakdowns. SMM-retained expert sources, drawing on prior cycle interviews with Iranian media analysts and figures with knowledge of internal IRNA operations conducted in April 2024, estimate that approximately 80 per cent of IRNA’s annual operating budget is sourced directly from state allocations; this figure should be treated as an SMM-retained expert estimate rather than a published official budget line. The funding structure, whatever the precise proportion, makes IRNA financially dependent on the Iranian state.

The 2025/26 Iranian fiscal cycle saw sharp increases in state allocations for some state-media and ideological institutions, notably IRIB (documented in the separate IRIB profile), but the SMM 2025/26 review did not identify a published audited IRNA budget figure for the 1404 (2025/26) Iranian fiscal year. Limited publication of detailed agency-level budget tables for the current fiscal cycle has made agency-level fiscal scrutiny difficult, and dollar-equivalent estimates for IRNA’s contemporary budget vary substantially depending on exchange-rate assumptions.

Editorial independence

IRNA functions as the Iranian government’s principal news-agency instrument for shaping domestic discourse and international messaging. Its outputs consistently promote the political, economic and foreign-policy positions of the government and the broader Islamic Republic, and its news products frequently amplify official statements, executive communiqués and ideological declarations without independent analysis or editorial counterpoint. Where IRNA covers social, economic and political-system issues, its framing predominantly reinforces state legitimacy or attributes adverse developments to external actors.

The 2025/26 cycle has reinforced rather than altered this editorial posture. IRNA operated as a principal Persian, English and Arabic-language channel for Iranian state messaging during the June 2025 Iran-Israel war (including coverage of the 16 June 2025 Israeli airstrike on IRIB’s Tehran headquarters covered in the separate IRIB profile), during the 2026 supreme-leadership transition after Mojtaba Khamenei was named Supreme Leader, and during periodic domestic unrest and intensified repression during 2025 and 2026. The shift in tone associated with the Naderi-to-Jaberi-Ansari transition has been most visible in IRNA’s framing of cultural and social-affairs coverage rather than in its political, security or foreign-policy outputs, which have remained consistent with the Iranian state’s institutional positions across the cycle.

External evaluations by Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Atlantic Council and other analysts consistently describe Iran’s broader media environment as state-controlled and lacking safeguards against government interference; this context supports IRNA’s classification as state-aligned and structurally subordinated to Iranian state messaging priorities.

AI and digital policy

IRNA has not published a public-facing institutional AI policy. As with IRIB and IIDO, Iran’s national AI initiatives are pursued through the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the National Centre for Cyberspace, with policy emphasis on national-security applications, domestic platform substitution and the management of foreign-platform access through the country’s filtering and traffic-control infrastructure rather than on the regulation of generative-AI use in news production. No public-sector generative AI framework specific to IRNA was identified during this review, and AI policy at the agency remains an internal administrative matter handled without published guidance.

Classification rationale

IRNA remains classified as State-Controlled (SC) for the 2026 cycle. The agency is Iran’s official state news agency under the executive supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, with its Managing Director appointed by the Minister, which places IRNA’s appointment chain in the executive branch rather than under the direct Article 175 authority that governs IRIB. The September 2024 transition from Ali Naderi to Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, associated with the change of government following the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, did not alter IRNA’s structural position: the agency remains state-owned without an independent governing board, audited financial statements or a statutory editorial firewall. IRNA’s output continued to function as official state messaging across the June 2025 Iran-Israel war and the 2026 supreme-leadership transition, and the SC classification therefore remains justified.

June 2026