About Al-Nujaba TV

Al-Nujaba TV

Al-Nujaba TV is an Iraqi satellite television channel based in Baghdad. Launched in 2013, it is owned and controlled by Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, a Shiite paramilitary movement that was formed in the same year. The channel broadcasts in Arabic and English to a worldwide audience via satellite and the internet, and it functions openly as the television arm of the movement that owns it. Where most Iraqi satellite channels are linked to a political party, a businessman or a religious authority, Al-Nujaba TV is unusual in the directness of the connection: it is part of the media directorate of an armed group, and its output is built around the political and religious themes that the group itself promotes.

Launch and ownership

According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Al-Nujaba TV was launched in 2013 as a media wing of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, shortly after the group was formed by Akram al-Kaabi. Kaabi had previously been associated with Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq and established the new movement in 2013, initially to support the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The television channel was created in the same founding moment, which underlines how central media operations are to the organisation. The Washington Institute describes the station as controlled by Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba and as part of the group's media directorate, within a body named as the Al-Nujaba Media and Satellite Broadcasting Organization. Amir al-Quraishi is named in the same profile as the general manager of Al-Nujaba TV.

Broadcasting from Baghdad and Tehran

The channel broadcasts from Baghdad and, according to the Washington Institute profile, has correspondents in most Iraqi provinces. It also maintains an office and studio in Tehran, the capital of Iran. That Tehran presence reflects the wider alignment of its owner: Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba is supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which United States assessments say provides the group with funding, weapons and training, and the movement regards Iran's supreme leader as its supreme religious authority. A Baghdad headquarters with a Tehran studio therefore places the channel physically inside the regional network it reports on and promotes. Its listed broadcast area is worldwide, delivered via satellite and internet streaming, including a live stream presence on video platforms.

Programming and editorial themes

The Washington Institute describes Al-Nujaba TV as a well-funded station offering political, cultural and religious programmes that promote Iran's self-styled axis of resistance and focus on muqawama, or resistance, themes. In practice that means news and discussion shaped around the activities and worldview of the Iraqi militia movement, opposition to the United States presence in Iraq and the region, and support for allied movements elsewhere in the Middle East. Religious programming sits alongside the political output, reflecting the Shiite Islamist identity of its owner. The channel's Arabic and English language services allow the same message to be carried both to its domestic Iraqi audience and to international viewers following Iraqi militia politics.

Place within the wider Nujaba media operation

Al-Nujaba TV does not operate alone. The Washington Institute profile lists subordinate and related elements that show a broader media structure behind the channel. Al-Nujaba Radio is listed as a subordinate element with its own website, and Yasamin Studio, a media production and distribution company that makes video clips for Al-Nujaba TV, is also part of the structure. The channel maintains a presence across social platforms, including a YouTube channel, a Telegram channel and a Twitter account. This arrangement, a satellite channel supported by a radio service, a production studio and social media accounts, is characteristic of the larger Iraqi armed groups, which invest heavily in media as a parallel form of influence alongside their military and political activity.

Affiliations with broadcasting unions

The channel is affiliated with the Islamic Radio and Television Union and is also a member of the Iraqi Radio and Television Union, according to the Washington Institute. The Islamic Radio and Television Union is an Iran-based grouping of broadcasters sympathetic to Tehran and its allies, and membership places Al-Nujaba TV inside a regional network of like-minded stations that share content, training and technical support. These affiliations mattered practically as well as symbolically: when the United States later moved against websites connected to the union and its Iraqi offshoot, Al-Nujaba TV was among the outlets caught up in the enforcement action, precisely because of the network to which it belonged.

United States sanctions designations

In March 2019 the United States Department of State designated Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, its leader Akram al-Kaabi and the group's associated television station, named in the designation as Qanat al-Nujaba al-Fadhaeyya, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224. The designation of the channel itself, rather than only its owner, was a notable step: it treated the television station as part of the designated organisation rather than as a separate journalistic outlet. United States counterterrorism guidance summarises the position in the same terms, listing the movement, its leader and its TV station together in the March 2019 designation. The measures exposed the channel and those dealing with it to the consequences that follow from a United States terrorism listing.

Domain seizure and digital evasion

In November 2020 the United States seized Al-Nujaba TV's webpage domain. The station responded by linking its website to a new domain, changing its address from Alnujaba.tv to Alnojaba.tv, a small alteration of spelling that kept the site reachable under a closely similar name. The Washington Institute's later study of militia digital media describes the same pattern across several outlets: after the United States Department of Justice seized thirty-three website domains related to Iran's Islamic Radio and Television Union on 22 June 2021, affected channels relocated to new domains and adjusted their social media branding to avoid detection. In Al-Nujaba TV's case, its Facebook page completely rebranded itself as Al-N TV, mixing the original logo with other objects, while its Twitter account kept its original name and branding.

The movement behind the channel

Understanding Al-Nujaba TV requires understanding its owner. Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, officially the 12th Brigade, is a Shiite Iraqi paramilitary group established in 2013 by Akram al-Kaabi. It became part of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, the umbrella of largely Shiite militias raised during the war against the Islamic State, and later acted under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. United States assessments describe it as one of Iran's most aggressive proxies in Iraq, with between three thousand and five thousand members as of a March 2025 overview, deployed mainly in southern Iraq and in Baghdad, Salah al-Din, Diyala and Nineveh provinces after years of fighting in Syria in support of the Assad government. The channel serves this movement as its public voice, which is why its programming, affiliations and sanctions history track the movement's own so closely.

Foreign Terrorist Organization designation in 2025

On 18 September 2025 the United States Department of State designated Harakat al-Nujaba and its aliases, including Al-Nujaba TV, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The step upgraded the channel's legal status in United States law from the earlier specially designated global terrorist listing to inclusion within a full foreign terrorist organisation designation. For a television station, the practical effect of these successive designations has been felt most visibly online, in domain seizures and platform pressure, rather than on satellite, where the channel has continued to broadcast from Baghdad. Its history since 2013 is therefore two stories at once: a militia building a television voice for its resistance message, and a long-running effort by the United States to treat that voice as part of the designated organisation itself. Reference listings continue to record the channel as an Iraqi satellite service broadcasting worldwide in Arabic and English, with its website given under an Iranian domain, a small detail that itself reflects the geography of its alliances and of the enforcement pressure it has faced online.