Mehr News Agency

Mehr News Agency (MNA) is an Iranian news agency founded in 2003 and owned by the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organisation (IIDO), a body answerable to the Supreme Leader. It publishes in Persian, English, and Arabic and distributes across more than 50 countries. Unlike IRNA (the Islamic Republic News Agency, the fully state-owned national wire), Mehr has historically operated with a degree of nominal editorial distance from the government: its director is appointed by the IIDO rather than the executive, and sensitive claims the government prefers not to formalise through IRNA are sometimes routed through it instead.

In Lowdown's source hierarchy, Mehr occupies a high-bias, low-independence position. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it as a right-leaning pro-government outlet with a questionable factual record that publishes state propaganda and anti-Western narratives. It has served as a platform for Holocaust-denial content. Its English-language output is monitored by foreign intelligence services and diplomatic missions as a leading indicator of official Iranian positioning, but claims should not be accepted without corroboration from independent outlets. Mehr and Tasnim (IRGC-linked) are the two Iranian outlets most likely to carry semi-official trial balloons; divergence between Mehr and IRNA signals factional positioning inside the system.

During the 2026 Iran conflict, Mehr News has served as one of the primary conduits for the Iranian government's information ecosystem. In Update 97, Mehr was the sole attributed channel for two of the conflict's most significant official data points: Iran's first wartime death figure of 3,468 killed through 13 May, and the SNSC's formalised Hormuz security plan barring US weapons transit through the Strait. Both figures carried no independent corroboration from human rights monitors at the time of publication; routing through Mehr rather than IRNA was consistent with the agency's role as a semi-official amplifier for sensitive claims.

On 14 June 2026, Mehr published a 14-point draft of the Islamabad memorandum listing a permanent all-fronts Ceasefire, $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets freed in a 60-day window, suspended oil sanctions, and a naval blockade lifted within 30 days. Neither Al Jazeera nor Iran International could verify the Mehr list, and no US or Iranian official confirmed the draft. The Ghalibaf-confirmed figure later narrowed from $24 billion to $12 billion. Mehr's unverified draft illustrated the agency's wartime function: strategic amplification of negotiating positions that the government wants in the public domain without formal attribution.