A reporter for Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 news hinted that Israel was supplying arms to Iranian protesters, sparking an outcry in Arabic media and even prompting Iran’s foreign minister to seize upon the report and accuse Israel of trying to foment war between Iran and the US.
Channel 14, which is seen as close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an unsourced report Tuesday that “foreign actors” were arming anti-regime protesters in Iran.
According to the network’s political correspondent, Tamir Morag, the weapons have enabled protesters to kill hundreds of Iranian security personnel — a relatively high toll that nonetheless paled in comparison with the thousands of protesters being “slaughtered,” said Morag.
While Morag was careful in his report not to explicitly implicate Israel in the alleged weapons transfer, on social media, he was more flippant.
“We reported tonight on Channel 14: foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” he wrote. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.”
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By Wednesday, Morag’s post was featured on the English-language services of both Al Jazeera and Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu news agency — both outlets that are extremely critical of Israel.
Israel has always sought to drag the U.S. into fighting wars on its behalf. But remarkably, this time they are saying the quiet part out loud.
With blood on our streets, Israel is explicitly gloating about having “armed protestors with live weapons” and “this is the reason for… pic.twitter.com/UomtRlSsR6
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) January 14, 2026
And Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi highlighted the post, saying it showed how Israel tries to “drag the US into fighting wars on its behalf.”
“With blood on our streets, Israel is explicitly gloating about having ‘armed protesters with live weapons’ and ‘this is the reason for the hundreds of dead’,” said Araghchi.
“Israel has always sought to drag the US into fighting wars on its behalf. But remarkably, this time they are saying the quiet part out loud,” he said. “President Trump should now know exactly where to go to stop killings.”
Israel’s mainstream Channel 12 reported that Morag’s insinuation sparked fury in Israel’s security establishment. The network’s evening news on Thursday featured a segment on the incident that was titled “Channel 14 in the service of Iran.”
Morag, for his part, hit back at Channel 12, writing on X that the title of the report was part of a “childish vendetta” against his own network because it “exposed the fact that you [Channel 12] work for Hamas, Hezbollah and all of the country’s biggest enemies.”
People hold posters of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a funeral ceremony for a group of security forces, who were killed during anti-government protests, in Tehran, Iran, January 14, 2026. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
The report came as US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran if it did not stop killing protesters. On Wednesday, Trump appeared to back away from the threat, saying he was assured there would be no more killings.
The nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy appeared increasingly smothered Thursday, a week after authorities shut the country off from the world and escalated a bloody crackdown that activists say has killed at least 2,637 people.
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