Can Iran's new TV chief bring IRIB, Rouhani closer?

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appointed a new chief for the country's broadcaster — a choice that can be described as favorable to President Hassan Rouhani.

Mohammad Sarafraz, the new head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), is an insider who led the organization’s abroad operations since 1992 and founded the flagship Press TV in 2007.

The importance of IRIB can hardly be exaggerated. With an annual budget of approximately $900 million (some estimates put it at $1 billion) and more than 50,000 employees, it is one of the largest media organizations in the Middle East. It is the only legal broadcaster in Iran and runs dozens of national and local TV channels and radio stations. Under Sarafraz, it has boldly expanded on the international scene and now runs dedicated news channels in English, Arabic and Spanish while broadcasting in more than 30 languages, including Bosniak, Azerbaijani, Mandarin, Malay and Albanian.

The IRIB chief is a key establishment position and, together with the head of the judiciary and chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), among the very few direct appointees of the supreme leader. Under Ayatollah Khamenei, the organization has been kept close to the conservative and hard-line factions. It was a harsh critic of the Reformist President Mohammad Khatami, and it has often collided with Rouhani since his election in 2013 — so much so that Rouhani took a public stance against IRIB last August and accused it of contradicting the constitution and giving a purposely negative coverage of his administration.