whether those calls for protest today go to get any, any traction, how many people are going to see coming out? but certainly here today, chance very much directed at the palace and president mahmoud abbas to go for there to be changed and there for to be elections. people want to vote again. certainly this all coming at a time when the palestinian authority are ready is facing incredibly low support rates. here in the west, back stephanie tech as in hebron there the funeral of nevada, but not ongoing this friday. ah, hop off the i will take you through the headlines. russia says the e u is being held hostage by an aggressive minority. after lead is failed to agree on a proposal to hold a summit with president vladimir putin. some member states of voice concerns about what they call moscow's aggressions. we are right now in a negative spiral and we need to brace for further downturn. so we agreed to push

back. when russia targets the european union on what we stands for when it violates human rights to constrain russia, when it attempts to undermine our interests. and we will engage russia when it is in our interest to do so to achieve our goals. for example, if we talk about climate change, or if we talk about public health of a headlines, china's approved government reshuffle in hong kong and what critics, they will further tighten beijing security crackdown over the territory. police chief chris tang will be com, security. secretary is pretty, says that john lee has been promoted to chief secretary as you've just been saying in the occupied west bank. the funeral procession. news now ending for an outspoken critic of palestinian president with the bus is out of by not died on thursday after being arrested and beaten by palestinian authorities security forces. it accused the p, a of human rights violations, and called on western nations to cut off aid to the group is even governments

planning to strengthen hate speech laws in response to the mosque attack. and christ church that killed 51 muslims. 2 years ago. the proposed changes would increase maximum sentences by hate speech offenses to 3 years in jail, or a $35000.00 fine. almost a 100 people left alone accounted for a day after the partial collapse of a 12 story apartment building in florida. at least one person is confirmed dead, but that toll is expected to rise. and scientists in israel site have made a discovery that could challenge established evolutionary history. the found bones from what they're describing as a new type of human national. i'm the homeless, named after the place where the binds were found. it may have lived alongside homo sapiens for more than 100000 years. that might not fit today, thanks for the company in the snazzy will take you through the next few hours of news on al jazeera. next it's mohammed jim jim. with the latest inside story. news,

news, news, news, news. the access denied the us. these is media websites linked to iran that ron calls it a breach of press freedom. so why is it happening now? and could it set a dangerous precedent for global censorship? this is inside stored. ah, ah. hello and welcome to the program. i'm how the jim jones, like many nations, iran has media outlets broadcasting news to the world through that countries

perspective. but the united states has accused ron of using them to spread misinformation. the us justice department seized 33 sites linked to iran, state media such as the english language press t, v at a channel used by humans her with the rebels. it also blocked 3 websites, operated bike type hezbollah and iranian back group in iraq. but some of the pages were soon back online under a different web address. different accused washington of double standards in as well me on the con john the, what the us did to iranian websites was a breach of all principles of freedom of speech, which the united states is proud of. they restricted freedom of speech. we condemn this measure. we will use all our legal and international means to counter this wrong policy of the united states. it is not a constructive move at a time when nuclear talks are underway in vienna. the seizures are happening at a sensitive time between the 2 nations. iran had just elected a new president. abraham racy,

has already ruled out meeting president joe biden. and in vienna, diplomats from the us, europe, china, russia. andy ron, have held 6 rounds of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. negotiators say they're close to a breakthrough. the. alright, let's bring our guests into iran homage. musashi is professor of political science at ron university. in washington d. c. courtney ranch is a contributor at tech policy press and in birmingham scott lucas isn't meritus professor of international politics at university of birmingham. a warm welcome to you all had let me start with you today. the seizures they've come at a really critical and delicate time a time when us and iranian officials are trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. how strange is the timing of this to you and do you believe that it has the

possibility to derail the negotiations? i mean, it's definitely not a good sign. it doesn't show any good well by the americans. also, it's interesting to note that prestige had been reporting very critically of the negotiations in the past month. in fact, the very same day that it was, sees it broke in exclusive news story with sources close to the negotiations saying that the american team was not very flexible in the talks that had been doing so repeatedly in the past month. so i think the fact that it was, sees during this very sensitive time might actually complicate the process of reaching a deal between iran in the us. it's got it from your vantage point. what do you think about the timing? i mean, is this strange and also what does the u. s. gain by doing this right now? could it be seen simply as a political tool to have more leverage in the negotiations going forward?

i don't think there's a direct connection between the, by the ministrations tactics and the seizures. i think it might sound a bit strange, but you have to traps in american policy. you have the policy right now, what your courses is to go into the nuclear talks and be and what you're very close to a resolution according to the audience, including your offering entry to the deal, lifting of american sanctions. and iran returned to compliance. on the other hand, you've got a truck in american policy, which has been there for years and was wrapped up by the tropic ministration, which is imposing sanctions. and those sanctions include, for example, pressure on any iranian entity which is using us service or us out. we just want the internet domains are. and so i think the treasury, in this case, simply was pursuing its own bureaucratic path. last october, it seized almost a 100 sites linked to ron's revolutionary guards, and they simply moved up and down on their bureaucratic paths that ok,

now we're going to take sites linked to what they call this information. whether it be iranian state outlet states, to tease or to allies such as iraq sought to post for law. that said, i agree with professor most of the it's counterproductive, it's counterproductive because it, it doesn't deal with any issues that aren't there in the nuclear talks. i think in fact it could undermine them. it doesn't deal with regional issues and it doesn't deal with their real issues that are there about iranian politics and the sense, for example, whether you talk about it runs own censorship of websites. the engineering of the presidential election last week, or indeed as detention for wrong in journalist courtney in the realm of information warfare. how significant is it? what the u. s. has done here with the seizures. and from your perspective, there's this set a new and more dangerous precedent when it comes to global censorship. well, i think this is the latest salvo in the information warfare that's been happening

around the world of states are seeing new ways to exert their foreign policy priorities through internet governance. and what we're seeing is what the seizure of the domain name system. you know, these websites that they're in the u. s. is trying to convey its power and its foreign policy priorities. but i think that one of the things that we should also be thinking about is the fact that these, you know, so called news websites or propaganda websites. we're aiming act providing information related to the nuclear talks. and the u. s. is not only concerned about iran, it's also concerned about domestic perception of engagement with iran and about re entering the nuclear deal. so i think it might be a little bit more complex. we don't know whether these are separate trucks or whether they're related. but in terms of censorship, we should, i think, be concerned when these types of approaches are taken and turning the d n as the domain name system into

a tool geopolitical information warfare. because that threatens the integrity of the internet and the global network. that is the world wide web. so we want to be very careful about this. scott. i saw you nodding along somewhat. courtney was saying there, did you want to jump in? i think dr. rush is absolutely spot on and that is the wider issue here beyond us in your, on is the president this such. ok, fine yours happens to be able because the domains will register us to exert pressure on iran. does it do so with other countries? not only china, russia, if they're perceived to be american photos, you could do so with france, germany with the u. k. do other countries who happen to have websites registered with them? do they now exert pressure on them as well? you know, the thing about taking a stop like this is once you open up the door, that a state can sort of bring the hammer down on access to the internet. you know, whether it be by state entities or non state entities. you can close that door. i

think this really cries out for something we can address, perhaps a separate program, which is the need for international cooperation over regulations. how many do you believe that this opens up a new front in the global information war? and do you think that this has made things you know more dangerous as this escalated things? i think it's definitely a dangerous move. something probably we could have expected from the trumpet ministration, but not from the bite and administration which presents itself as a supporter of democracy and freedom of expression. now with regard to the accusation of misinformation, the issue here is who gets to decide what is information? and what is misinformation? if a government, any government, including the iranian government or the u. s. government does this, then it's simply the center of the internet. and the internet is somewhere where people could express themselves pre the it's been like this forever. and with

regard to the new site, i mean, especially with press tv and i'll all and these are you a professional news channels with hundreds of people working in them? and when you sensor them, it essentially sends a very bad signal even to the uranian people. because on the one hand, you're always talking about freedom of expression having a variety of voices. but at the same time, if you sensor voices that you don't like, then that would simply be completely wrong. and again, it opens the door for a very dangerous path. i think courtney, if the rationale behind this is to counter dis information. you know, you have to look at what happens next, which is that, you know, a lot of these websites, if they've been seized, if the domains have been seized and the websites have been shut down. i mean, aren't the iranians, if they haven't already, just going to be moving then to other domains and starting new websites that are

accessible to everybody. there was the example of foreign news agency, 2018. you know, that was seized. that was shut down and then it moved to a new domain. it was back on line soon afterwards. so how does this move actually help counter disinformation? that's exactly the point, right? this is not the same level of censorship that we see in iran, where it has, you know, blanket blocks in a country against the entire internet and portions of it and has created there been internal internet. but this is an effort to deny iran access to us services and to easily reaching us audiences. the i p address still exists. those websites still exist. they're just not hosted on an american based donate domain name server. so the same thing is not new. the same thing happened with wiki leaks over a decade ago. the same approach was the proposed in the law in the us that would

allow the us to do the same thing for sites that regularly host copyright infringing material. but what we see with this is this expand how this deanna approaches views. but the fact is, you also have to ask, does iran have a right to use all of these expressive services, whether we're talking about domain names serviced, twitter accounts, facebook accounts to reach the global public to conveyance messages while it denies the same rights internally forcing its own population to use virtual public bpn, virtual private networks, or other anti, you know, other circumvention technologies. and meanwhile, like let's not forget that, denying the ability of a us domain names service provider to host an iranian web site is a far cry from the censorship that iran house, with at least 15 journalists in jail. the murder of a journalist,

the assassination by the state and you know, overt ramp and censorship. so i think we also need to be careful about kind of false equivalency here. scott, if i might, i'd like to ask you another question with regard to the timing of this move by the us. because this comes just days after abraham racy was elected president in iran, he's the incoming president. the u. s. is accused him of human rights abuses. they haven't post sanctions on him in the past. should this in any way be construed as a message to him and his incoming administration? i think his daughters pointed out where we don't know what other the 2 tracks are from earlier are linked in any way. i'd be surprised if the she meant to be a message tracy, for a couple of reasons. first of all, right, you see is there as effectively as a spokes person for the supreme later he,

his manufactured a watch was very much because he was the favorite of the supreme leaders office. all other candidates that could have defeated them, the election were band, were actually blocked by the guardian council. you know, so there's a message being sent here. it wouldn't be the right. you see, it would be to the supreme leaders office. and i don't think that the supreme leaders office is going to be that concerned about the seizure of the domains of these sites. because again, as you've noted, the sites continue to operate. and if anything, it gives iran, i think, in a past, sort of an unwitting propaganda victory here, because they can claim to be the victim of the, of the awful americans who are trying to process and suppress their freedoms. when in fact, again, as dr. rush pointed out, you know, iran has been basically not only a century they've been doing so on a mass scale. and indeed, if we were to talk about prost tv, you know, i repress tv every day. i read it every day to try to understand what is going on from the perspective of the iranian state. and also to really track what has happened, which is that since the 2009 mass protest over the disputed elections in iran or

prostate has been curved, sharply curved and what it can report and how it reports that in other words, the guidelines are much strict on it, if you try to shut down prestige the completely, we don't get smart about what is happening with, with press tv, but with other sites and that limits or opportunity for them for dialogue between you and i, and as part of the international community. hm. and what about those criticisms of iran from various governments and various right groups who say, you know, iran doesn't really have a way to credibly go after the u. s. for this in a country where there is so much censorship, that you know, they cannot cry foul right now because of these moves that have been taken by the us. i think it's very true that probably the uranian government won't be able to do anything. but the fact that the uranium government sensors the internet doesn't make this ok, i mean internet, censorship is wrong anywhere. so if the running government does it, it's wrong. it's the same with the american government. also we have to remember

that these word use websites with political messages. they weren't involved. busy in any sort of terrorism or drug trafficking were pornography or anything like that . so the fact that you're actually censoring a political message is, i think, is a very bad move. at the same time, we have to remember that there is a significant power difference here. the americans have a vast array of resources and capacity regarding the internet. now these domains were dot com domain and essentially seizing them has logged access all over the world, not just within the united states, and that's different from the iranian government. so the u. s. government is essentially centering these websites all over the world, not just within the united states. and i think it are open again, a door to maybe obliquely future if they continue to do this with other countries

as well. coordinate iranian officials have said that they're going to pursue this through legal channels. are there legal options available to them with regard to this? i think that's a great question because one of the things we saw several years ago is that i can the internet corporation for sign names and numbers which used to be, you know, us, the us used to have control over the whole domain system. well, they've really devolved authority over that. they've created several, many, hundreds of new top level domain names. so press t, v dot i r, which is host in iran still accessible. you know, it's correct that now dot com dot net these hi top level domain names that are hosted and run by us registries. and us based services are being told that providing a service to iran counteract the sanctions and that the services did not

effectively register under the foreign agents registration act known as farrah. so i think this is a lot more complicated because the u. s. is trying to frame does not of the speech thing because they haven't actually censored the content. they've centered, you know, one specific way of getting to that content. and they put pressure on the services providing you know, that provide those services to iran saying, you know, this is not acceptable. i think we have to, you know, this also raises questions about other platforms that allow iran and iranian leaders who may be on thanks. and list access to their services to create accounts, et cetera. so whether or not this represents a massive escalation or, you know, kind of a one off salvo i think remains to be seen. but it certainly raises questions about whether a lot more services are going to be deciding whether they need to register of the, for an agent, whether they need to make it clear that they can't provide these services. and we

don't know that yet. we don't know if the treasury department is going to pursue that, or if these private companies will decide that they're a debt to be in compliance, they're going to have to deny the service and that would represent a significant escalation in the information war. scott, i saw you are reacting to some would. courtney was saying, did you want to expand on the point she was making? right. i think in other words, courtney is absolutely right that you know, just simply isn't were a blanket ban? even if you're supposed to enforce you've sanctions information really isn't going to i think work and i think will raise in fact, wide or international attention to this on how to deal with it. i think there's tension parallel, which i'll put out to you. i'd like to hear the reactions, the other guests on this, and that is when we have had this information and preston, he does put out this information times. it's not the majority of information on the site, but there is some. but when, for example, you've had russian outlets such as r t that have put out this information, they have lost their license to operate in certain countries as a broadcast. and the press tv has lost its license to operate in the united kingdom,

algebra castro, supposedly. because of some just information, i think that question of whether there will be a system of licensing that will be adopted by various states, which will not be as it were, this blanket sweeping ban. but as it were targeting certain sites, if they're found to be pernicious, this information, misinformation and propaganda, that may be the next phase of what we're looking at, not only in terms of the broadcast, but in terms of what is available and how may it look to me like you might have wanted to add to what scott was saying that did you want to jump in as well? yes. so i think the fact that the dot i r domain is still operating, i don't think it's going to fix the issue because the dot i or domain is not well known to anywhere in the world. people know the dot com and dot net domain. and this is actually not a sensor of just some content of the press tv website. it's essentially shutting it

down for the international audience. now when we're talking about misinformation in this information from outlets such as r, t or other outlets, if there is like a unbiased international organization, decided then perhaps that could work. but when it's the natural government doing this, i think that is propaganda in itself because you're actually shutting down the voices, you don't bite. whereas freedom of expression means tolerating voice. if you don't like, what is it that these websites are saying that is so wrong? i think people should be able to access the information they like, especially when it comes to the internet, which is actually freed access to use an access to information for people all over the world. so divide in administration can talk about democracy and freedom of expression in countries such as iran and then censoring voices within your own that

it doesn't bite. it's definitely a double standard. courtney, i mean, trying to counter disinformation and misinformation is so difficult in this day and age. is there a more effective way to do what i mean? who, who does ultimately get to be the arbiter of this? and are there actual concrete steps that can be taken, you know, to really effectively counter the problem? i mean, i think that is the $1000000.00 question that the world is trying to figure out. i mean, one of the things that this whole incident illustrates, again, is the need for a pluralistic you know, environment of, di, enough providers of social media platforms of places where are these things are hosted? because the fact is yes, dot com and dot net are more well known. but the whole reason of creating new top level domains and now doing in local languages, etc,

is to make that more accessible to, to widen up the array of entities that can have these, these, you know, domain name services who can provide these services. so i think it just emphasizes the need that we need pluralism. you know, if, if, for example, when trump gets kicked off facebook, you know, cries of censorship. if facebook wasn't at 3000000000 person company with massive profits, maybe we wouldn't be so worried about getting kicked off of one platform. so it's really about the, i think, the, the power of, you know, certain platforms that have this outside influence in the internet regulatory sphere. but in terms of combating disinformation, i mean, let's, let's be clear. iran is engaged in disinformation, targeting the us to undermine its democracy. and the electoral process, that's why you saw several social media platforms take off accounts and content

that were trying to spread disinformation and undermine us election last year. and then also there the iranian news organizations and state accounts are using our targeting journalists, iranian journalists who are trying to report freely and independently on the country. think about the b b. c. think about my former colleague in a rely on adjacent rely on they are targeting them with this information online harassment campaign. so these are not just neutral reporting, you know, on true on truth or, you know, whatever is happening with the latest developments in the near talks. they are also aged in information warfare that are also targeting iranian right. isn't scott, we've only got about a minute left. let me just ask you very simply, i mean, where it is all this, leave the u. s. and iranian relationship at the moment, i mean, is it? is it as bad as it has been for a long time? is there any, any, any possibility that it gets better? and i think in the short term where the rubber hits the road is those nuclear talks

in vienna. the 6 round ended last week, and when it did, not only the iranians with european union went to the idea that in the next round of talks, which should take place in the next couple weeks. there might be a deal. and if there's a deal, you know, all these ripples including what we're talking about today, they'll be superseded by this opening. all right, we've got the nuclear deal, but that's when it gets again complicated, because beyond that you get back to the regional issues. so which intercept with the seizures? you know, what about the syrian conflict? remote the iran in the u. s. is involved. what about iraq? what about yemen? in other words, i think the nuclear power off the chess boards important. then we get to these regional issues that will link politics and society and indeed not. all right, but we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave our conversation there. thank you so much oliver. i guess how much was savvy courtney, raj? and scott lucas and thank you to for watching. you can see this and all of our previous programs. again, anytime by visiting our website, algeria dot com and for further discussion,

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were attacking ringer and now they're attacking everyone and me on my do you regret was like, gosh, we listen. absolutely. nigeria with a woman present, it would be great. we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on al jazeera. ah, hello, there, i'm the stars the attained hall with the top stories here on al jazeera. now divisions within the european union are rising to the surface as the 2nd day of the summit gets underway in brussels. russia is foreign ministry says the e u is being an aggressive minority. lead is failed to agree on a proposal to hold a summit with president of the prison. some member states have voiced concern about what they are calling moscow aggressions saying it must change its behavior. natasha buck that report it was clearly going.