Iran game show asks contestants which ‘spy’ Boris Johnson wants released

A video clip from an Iranian state television quiz show smearing jailed British national Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe and several former and current prisoners of the Islamic Republic as spies has sparked outrage, and could contain a message for future relations between Tehran and Washington.

Rokhdad, which airs on the Iranian state broadcasting empires’s recently launched Ofogh network, bills itself as a history and current events quiz programme which airs on Saturdays and Sundays.

A 75-second clip of a recent episode in which contestants are asked to identify details of journalists and scholars jailed on specious espionage charges was posted in recent days to the show’s Instagram page, where it was discovered by a BBC Persian service journalist Parham Ghobadi and shared online.

“Which spy did Boris Johnson demand to be released in a meeting with the Iranian president?” asks the show’s host.

“Jason Rezaian,” says a female contestant, referring to the Washington Post journalist who was jailed for a year and a half on unsubstantiated espionage charges following a closed-door trial derided as unfair by international observers.

“Wrong! Nazanin Zaghari,” says the host, referring to the former Reuters employee who has spent nearly five years in prison on what human rights monitors and the UK government have denounced as trumped up espionage charges.

Iran’s state television is tightly controlled by hardliners and Revolutionary Guard loyalists who often use it as a mechanism to settle scores and send messages to Iranians and those abroad. 

In recent years, losing ground to satellite channels operated from abroad, state television has sought to give itself a more edgy sheen.

Iran analyst Amir Toumaj described the clip on Twitter as “an example of how the Islamic Republic uses instruments of pop cultures, creating bizarre, Kafkaesque scenes".

Reacting to the clip, writers on social media denounced the use of the still jailed Ms Zaghari-Radcliffe as a prop on the quiz show as “disgusting,” “cruel” and “sickening.”

Other alleged spies who are named during the segment are Lebanese information technology specialist Nizar Zakka, a US permanent resident freed in 2019 after spending nearly four years in an Iranian prison on charges widely dismissed as groundless.

But perhaps the most significant of the alleged spies featured on the clip is Abdolrasoul Dorri-Esfahani, a Canadian-Iranian diplomat who was among the team that negotiated the landmark 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with world powers that has been abandoned by outgoing President Donald Trump.

“Which [spy] was part of the negotiations team during the time of the JCPOA?” the host asks.

“Dorri-Esfahani,” says a contestant.

“Which spy was able to obtain a medal of service from the president?” the host asks, in an attempt to associate the jailed former official with the pragmatist president Hassan Rouhani.

“Jason Rezaian,” answers the contestant.

“Dorri-Esfahani,” the host corrects her. “Speak louder.”

Mr Dorri-Esfahani was prosecuted and ultimately jailed on espionage charges in 2017 by hardliners and Revolutionary Guard operatives in the intelligence and judiciary apparatus for on still murky charges of leaking information about Iran during the talks.

The recent election of Joseph Biden has raised hopes among some Iranians that Washington and Tehran could restore the JCPOA, ease sanctions ramped up by Mr Trump and resume diplomatic talks, a move which some hardliners oppose as long as Mr Rouhani remains in power. Mr Dorri-Esfahani’s fate potentially serves a warning to any Iranian official communicating with the U.S. or other world powers on the nuclear deal.