US's Treasury Dept. blocks, seizes website of 'Iran' newspaper
The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has, in an arbitrary move, blocked and seized the official domain name of Iranian state-run newspaper "Iran", the paper's managing director says.
According to Press TV, Mahdi Shafi’ei made the comments on Saturday, adding that legal efforts are underway to unblock and take back the domain "iran-newspaper.com".
In the meantime, he said, the newspaper's online version will be available via "irannewspaper.ir".
The newspaper's .com domain is currently seized by the US Treasury Department, and its Florida-based "OFAC Holding" is now introduced as the registrant of the "iran-newspaper.com".
The US government says "it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil," a US Homeland Security official said in 2012.
In January 2020, the website of Iran's Fars news agency was also blocked upon the US Treasury's order.
The news agency said that it had received an email from the server company, which explicitly said that the blockage is due to an order by the OFAC and its inclusion in the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN).
Now, access has become available to Farsnews' website on its .ir domain.
Previously, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter targeted Iranian accounts, including those belonging to broadcasters.
In December 2019, Google blocked access to Press TV and Hispan TV's official YouTube accounts without any prior notice.
ME
