About KhabarOnline News Agency

KhabarOnline News Agency

KhabarOnline is an Iranian news agency and online news service based in Tehran, publishing at khabaronline.ir in Persian, English and Arabic. Founded in 2008, it grew into one of Iran's most widely read online news outlets, covering politics, society, the economy and culture. It occupies an unusual position in the Iranian media system: it is privately owned rather than run by the state or a ministry, it describes itself as principlist while insisting that it avoids party and factional tendencies, and outside observers have characterised it in sharply different ways, from moderate to conservative to, in Reporters Without Borders' 2026 description, "pro-regime independent". Its history includes reported closeness to a former parliament speaker, a formal denial of that link, and two prosecutions arising from its journalism.

Founding and ownership

KhabarOnline was established in 2008 under the ownership of Hossein Vahedipour. The Persian daily Hamshahri introduced the new agency to readers in December 2008, shortly after its launch, at a time when online news services were rapidly displacing print as the primary source of news for many Iranians. Ownership later passed to Alireza Moezzi, who is recorded as the current owner, while the managing director is Hassan Lasjerdi. The agency's own "about" text, dating from March 2009, sets out its self-understanding: it presents itself as principlist, meaning committed to the principles of the Islamic Revolution, but states that it avoids party and factional tendencies, and it says that different political factions and personalities are represented in its coverage. That combination, loyalty to the system's principles combined with a claim to stand apart from its factions, has defined the outlet's public identity throughout its existence.

Reported links to Ali Larijani

From early in its life, KhabarOnline was described by various sources as close to Ali Larijani, the conservative politician who served as speaker of Iran's parliament. The Tehran Bureau, writing for PBS Frontline in November 2010 under the headline "Larijani's 'Landslide'", treated the connection as part of the political landscape, and ABC News referred to the association in an August 2010 report on an alleged assassination attempt on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a story in which KhabarOnline's reporting figured. The alleged link was sensitive enough that in May 2012 the public relations office of the Iranian parliament publicly denied that KhabarOnline had any relationship with the speaker of parliament. The episode illustrates a recurring feature of Iranian media politics, in which successful outlets are widely assumed to have powerful patrons, and in which both the assumption and the denial become part of the public record.

News coverage

KhabarOnline publishes across the standard range of a general news agency: politics and parliament, government and foreign policy, society, the economy, culture and sport. Its Persian service is its flagship, and its English and Arabic services carry a selection of its reporting to readers outside Iran. Because of its speed and reach, its reports are frequently the first Persian-language account of political developments in Tehran to be picked up by other Iranian outlets and by foreign media monitoring Iran. Its role as a chronicler of the Iranian media industry itself is also visible in the record: when the Borna News Agency received a new acting head in December 2024, it was KhabarOnline's Persian report that documented the appointment. International news organisations citing Iranian developments have regularly drawn on KhabarOnline's reporting over the years, and reference works list it among Iran's notable news agencies.

Editorial identity and outside assessments

Few Iranian outlets have been labelled in as many different ways as KhabarOnline. It has been editorially described as moderate by some observers and as conservative or principlist by others. The BBC Monitoring service referred to it in 2019 in the context of Iran's factional media landscape, and Iran International described it as moderate in a 2026 analysis of parliament's waning power. Reporters Without Borders, in a January 2026 report on a media blackout in Iran, referred to the publication as "pro-regime independent", a formulation that captures the tension between its private ownership and its general alignment with the Islamic Republic's framework. KhabarOnline's own position, stated in its foundational about text, is that it does not surrender its principlist identity but refuses to act as the organ of any party or faction. In practice, that has meant publishing voices from across the conservative and moderate spectrum of Iranian politics while operating inside the red lines of the system.

The 2015 prosecution over IRGC corruption reporting

In January 2015 the Prosecutor-General of Iran filed a formal complaint against KhabarOnline over an article it had published concerning the extent of corruption in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The complaint was reported at the time by both Deutsche Welle's Persian service and BBC Persian, on 13 January 2015. The case was significant because the Revolutionary Guard is among the most powerful institutions in Iran, spanning military, political and extensive economic interests, and reporting on corruption within it touches one of the most sensitive subjects in Iranian public life. That a principlist outlet rather than a reformist one was prosecuted over such reporting underlined both the reach of KhabarOnline's journalism and the narrow limits within which even system-aligned media in Iran operate. The complaint placed KhabarOnline in the long list of Iranian outlets that have faced legal action over their reporting.

The 2020 Soleimani wording case

In January 2020 KhabarOnline's director was prosecuted after the agency published an article, quoting Euronews, which stated that Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani had been "killed" rather than "martyred". Soleimani, one of Iran's most revered military figures, had been killed in a United States strike, and in official Iranian usage his death is invariably described as martyrdom. The choice of the neutral word "killed" in the Euronews-sourced report was treated as an offence serious enough to trigger legal action against the responsible director, as recorded by the Journalism is not a Crime project on 4 January 2020. KhabarOnline published its own explanation of the matter, carried by the Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper on 3 January 2020. The case became a frequently cited example of how terminology itself is policed in Iranian journalism, and of the personal legal exposure carried by the named directors of Iranian news outlets, who are answerable in court for what their organisations publish.

Legal environment and the responsible-director system

The two prosecutions reflect the structure of Iranian press law rather than the peculiarities of one outlet. Iranian media operate under a licensing system in which a named managing director bears legal responsibility for published content, and complaints by senior judicial officials can be brought over individual articles. KhabarOnline's experience, complaints in 2015 over corruption reporting touching the Revolutionary Guard and in 2020 over a single word in a report about Soleimani, shows how that system bears on day-to-day editorial decisions. It also helps explain the outlet's careful self-positioning: an agency that describes itself as principlist and non-factional is asserting both a political identity and a measure of legal and political protection, while its willingness to publish reporting that twice brought it before the courts shows the limits of that protection.

Place in Iran's online news landscape

KhabarOnline belongs to the generation of Iranian news services created in the 2000s that moved Iranian journalism online, alongside agency websites run by Fars, Mehr, ISNA, ILNA and others. Within that field it is distinguished by its private ownership, its longevity, and its reputation as one of the country's most-visited news services. It has survived changes of ownership, a publicly denied association with one of the system's most powerful politicians, and two prosecutions, while maintaining daily publication in three languages. Reference listings of Iranian news agencies consistently include it, and its reports continue to be a standard source for observers following Iranian politics, society and culture. From its founding in 2008 to the present, KhabarOnline has remained a fixture of Iran's online news environment and a useful case study in how a privately owned, principlist outlet navigates the constraints of the Iranian media system.