Iranian Government Websites Discovered On Texas Internet Company

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http://cbs11tv.com/localnews/local_story_164173338.html

For the past 14 months, the embargoed hard-line Islamic government of Iran has connected dozens of its official websites to the World Wide Web through an American Internet company headquartered in Bedford, Texas. Among them: the official English-language website of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ul-Uzma Khamenei and official sites of other ruling religious clerics who form one prong of what President George W. Bush has called an “Axis of Evil.”

The websites of Iran’s ruling religious hierarchy have resided unnoticed on the Internet servers of the Bedford-based company CI-Host since last year, company officials acknowledge. More than 45 other Iranian government websites hosted by CI Host include some that publish Islamic Republic propaganda, hail deceased founding intellectuals of the 1979 revolution, and provide theological guidance to inquiring souls.


He said CI Host, which carries 225,000 sites whose owners pay for space on its servers, was an unwitting victim of a client in Los Angeles. That client had brokered American Internet space for the Iranian government unbeknownst to CI Host, Faulkner said. He declined to name the Los Angeles client on the advice of his company’s attorney. “I think that finding out that indirectly a customer of ours has been doing business with the Iranian government I do think adds a bit of insult to our country,” Faulkner said

“Being able to set up as a customer and being hosted at CI Host without us having knowledge of that I think does make us wonder, ‘if that is out there, what else is out there?” Faulkner said. “And, how do we take 220,000 sites and police them for content, including translating them from Arabic into English and having that rigorous process?” Weisburd said he would like federal authorities to determine the identity of CI Host’s Los Angeles client, the one who brokered the web sites.