TV report titled “The Sarajevo–Tehran Axis: An Islamist Viper in the Heart of Europe,” by journalist Jurica Gudelj aired on Radiotelevision Herceg-Bosne has sparked numerous reactions in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian public, as media professionals and analysts deem it stigmatizing, inflammatory and one-sided. Its content is also the reason it is has been reported to the regulator.

The Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) confirmed to Media.ba that it has received several individual complaints in relation to this TV report, adding that it will act accordingly and initiate a preliminary procedure in accordance with the CRA Rulebook on the handling of violations of license conditions and regulations.

In the disputed TV report, the author addressed the United States and Israeli attacks on Iran, as well as the way in which “global conflicts spill into Bosnia and Herzegovina,” warning in the introduction that they are creating “new lines of division in societies in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” The segment also mentions “links between Bosniak politics and Iran,” claiming they “have lasted for more than half a century.” It further states that Bosnia and Herzegovina “must clearly stand on the side of the West and against theocratic regimes that support terrorists around the world and kill their own citizens.”

The report is problematic for several reasons. Nermina Mujagić, professor of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, believes it represents a classic propaganda-style simplification of the conflict in the Middle East and an attempt to portray Bosnia and Herzegovina as a kind of “miniature version of the global clash of civilizations.”

Such an interpretation, Mujagić told Media.ba, revives the old wartime matrix from the 1990s, which presented ethnic communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina through a simplified civilizational divide: some are allegedly oriented toward the West and portrayed as “civilized,” while others are associated with the East and implicitly labelled as “barbaric.”

“This is a typical example of the securitization of political discourse, in which complex social and political issues are deliberately translated into the language of security threats. In this way, Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are being symbolically constructed as a potential security problem for Europe, thereby delegitimizing any form of political or moral resistance grounded in peace, international law and humanistic values,” says professor Mujagić, whose academic and research work focuses on social and political conflicts, civic virtues, media and the democratization of the public sphere.

Beyond the two  interlocutors, the accompanying footage is also problematic

Problematic aspects of the report also concern its presentation, for which archival footage of pro-Gaza protests in held Sarajevo was used as illustrative material. Space for commentary was given only to two interlocutors – Frano Yehuda Kolonomos Martinčević and Robert Kolobara – which falls short of professional journalistic standards.

Robert Kolobara, presented as a security expert, is frequently invited as a interlocutor in TV reports and appearances on the same television station which is sympathetic to the politics of HDZ BiH. His commentary on Iran and its “links with Bosnia and Herzegovina” also regularly appears in its programmes. In February this year, he described Iran as the “ mother ship for all terrorists in the Middle East and Europe.”

In June last year, while commenting on military operations between Israel and Iran, Kolobara spoke about “political positioning in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, stating that a meeting between the Minister of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Iranian military attaché “was not a gaffe, but rather an evidence of the continuity of policies that sympathize with Iranian regimes.”

In a manipulative column from October last year, writing about Croats living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he claimed that this ethnic group is being “historically exterminated, removed from their own history, and replaced with a malignant fiction conceived in the minds of guests of a Sarajevo hotel in the early 1990s.” “That is what we call the leukemia of history,” Kolobara wrote.

Commenting on the controversial RTV Herceg-Bosne TV report in a column for RadioSarajevo, Emir Suljagić, director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, described Kolobara as “a figure who is occasionally released into the public sphere to sharpen political rhetoric or divert attention from another problem.”

Frano Martinčević, the second interlocutor chosen by Gudelj, has also appeared several times as a guest on RTV Herceg-Bosne, where he commented on “geopolitical developments in the Middle East.” A musician by profession, he said in one of the station’s TV reports, that he “developed a political career early on.” His father is a Croat from Kreševo and his mother a Jew from North Macedonia. In the early 1990s, he said, he joined the Croatian Democratic Union, where he “formed his national and political views.” In his views on Sarajevo, he refers to to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina as “a hawk of antisemitism in Europe.”

The Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina has warned, among other things, that Martinčević’s public activity could have harmful consequences for the position of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relations between communities, interreligious dialogue and overall social relations in the country, adding that he holds no position within the Jewish Community of BiH.

Dangerous and harmful discourse

According to Media.ba’s interlocutors, the aired report is manipulative, one-sided and stigmatizing, marked by inflammatory rhetoric and violating fundamental journalistic principles.

“This is pure stigmatization and inflammatory discourse that is unacceptable under the provisions of the CRA Code, but also dangerous and harmful in relation to socially accepted values of human rights and the role of the media,” says Borka Rudić, Secretary-General of the BH Journalists’ Association.

Since RTV Herceg-Bosne holds a valid broadcasting licence issued by the regulator, Rudić stresses that it must comply with the Code under all circumstances.

“The journalist who authored TV report, as well as the editors of this outlet, should know this. Politicians from the Parliament of the Federation of BiH should also know this and, instead of launching a political campaign against RTV Herceg-Bosne, they could file complaints with the CRA and request action in terms of applying the Code and addressing breaches of licence conditions,” Rudić stressed.

She also noted that it is a devastating that any media outlet in Bosnia and Herzegovina attempts to “stigmatize and insult all Muslims and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarajevo (a viper in the heart of Europe) and portray them as a terrorist threat through a crude and inflammatory interpretation of a war taking place thousands of kilometres away from us.”

A clear parallel between RTRS and RTV Herceg-Bosne

If the TV report is viewed solely through the lens of journalistic standards, the objections include the absence of diverse sources, generalization, strongly rhetorical and propagandistic language, and a lack of genuine contextualization of global events and their reflection in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to Predrag Blagovčanin, editor-in-chief of Tačno portal. In that context, he notes it is difficult to even describe it as a journalistic piece.

“This is a classic ideological and interpretative segment with a clear political background, the kind that can regularly be seen in RTV Herceg-Bosne reporting,” Blagovčanin says.

“Given that the author of TV report, if it can even be called that, is Jurica Gudelj and that it was broadcast on RTV Herceg-Bosne, we should not be surprised by the level of unprofessionalism and sensationalism with the clear aim of labelling ‘political Sarajevo as an Iranian centre in the heart of Judeo-Christian Europe,’” Blagovčanin added.

He also says it is absolutely clear that RTV Herceg-Bosne, primarily due to the way it is financed and the staff working at this unofficial public broadcaster of the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, represents “the most significant propaganda tool of HDZ BiH and the Croatian National Assembly.” In that sense, Blagovčanin adds, a clear comparison can be made between RTRS and RTV Herceg-Bosne.

This TV report is an example of how a good, objective TV report should not look, especially when dealing with a topic such as the US and Israeli attack on Iran, said Minel Abaz, columnist and researcher.

As he told Media.ba, professional standards were not met in this TV report and, moreover, all basic journalistic principles were violated.

“TV report is one-sided and made exclusively for the eyes and ears of the nationalist and Islamophobic segment of the Croatian public in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because it seeks to portray the Bosniak population as backward, Islamist, intolerant, closed, fundamentalist… which may contribute to encouraging hostility and incitement against Bosniak women and men and, more broadly, Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond,” Abaz stressed, noting the the only positive element is that it clearly states at the very beginning that the attack on Iran was carried out by the United States and Israel.

The interviewees’ comments are not based on serious empirical analysis

Abaz also warns about the part of the TV report stating that “anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments have gained momentum,” noting this is mentioned in a way implying those were present only among Bosniaks.

“On the other hand, this is a legitimate political stance, just as it was normal in the 1990s to be against Milošević and Serbia, or as it is right thing today to oppose Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Putin. The report does not, for instance, address anti-Semitic views among the Croatian and Serbian public —Croatian especially —in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. In this public sphere, swastikas are normalized, the far-right is on the rise, and the Ustaša movement and its salute ‘Za dom spremni’ are glorified and/or relativized — yet this does not constitute a problem for HDZ BiH officials or media loyal to them, the so-called security and political ‘analysts,” Abaz stressed.

Commenting on Robert Kolobara’s claim that the Bosniak public is anti-Zionist and that there is no distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, Abaz argues that Kolobara is not only mistaken but is deliberately misleading, presenting - from the perspective of political science - factually incorrect statements

“Being anti-Zionist and opposing Zionism is a legitimate (and still legal) political position and movement. If we can oppose nationalism, fascism or, as many on the Croatian right emphasize, communism, why could we not oppose Zionism, which George Orwell classified as ‘direct, not transferred nationalism,’ and about which he wrote that ‘it has all the usual characteristics of a nationalistic movement, but its American variety appears more violent and malevolent than the British one,’” Abaz says.

He also mentioned Kolobara’s statement in the report about the celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution at the Iranian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was attended by political actors based in Sarajevo. However, Abaz added that Kolobara remained silent about the “'crimes' of the Croatian political leadership in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which welcomes and celebrates war criminals (the Herceg-Bosna Six, Kordić), hosts the Ustaša singer Marko Perković Thompson, and in September 2025 attended the marking of Israel’s Independence Day in Mostar“.

“Kolobara also forgets or deliberately conceals the fact that the then mayor of Mostar, Ljubo Bešlić, a member of HDZ BiH, signed a twinning agreement between Mostar and the Iranian city of Isfahan on March 5, 2018 — in Iran itself. Mostar hosted the event ‘Days of Iran in BiH’ in 2016 and 2017, and the programme was held at ‘Kosača,’” Abaz added.

According to Abaz, Kolobara’s most chauvinistic statement is that the Tehran–Sarajevo axis is building a “political viper in the heart of Europe,” thereby exaggerating the influence of Iran in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“By attributing danger to the ‘Sarajevo–Tehran coalition,’ the reality is actually the opposite: his hateful, chauvinistic and unfounded statements are dangerous for an entire segment of the population, because they are generalizing and collectively place the entire Bosniak people within a particular ideological narrative,” Abaz believes.

Such political statements, which are not grounded in serious empirical analysis, according to Nermina Mujagić, erase key conceptual distinctions between political ideologies and ethnic hatred.

“This creates a false and dangerous narrative according to which anti-Zionism necessarily implies antisemitism, even though these are different categories: the first refers to criticism of a particular political ideology or state policy, while the second represents a form of ethnic and religious hatred toward Jews,” Mujagić emphasized.

Particularly worrying manipulation of religious traditions

Predrag Blagovčanin believes that TV reports like this certainly pose a danger and represent a broader problem for the journalism profession, but he also notes that the only consolation is that RTV Herceg-Bosne has very low viewership and, as he stressed, almost no real influence.

It is clear that consumers of this report, as well as other content broadcast on RTV Herceg-Bosne, belong to an ideological position that believes — and firmly maintains — that ‘Taliban’ live in Sarajevo and that Bosnian Muslims represent one of the greatest threats to the Christian values promoted by HDZ, which sees nothing problematic in concerts by Marko Perković Thompson, the accompanying Ustaša iconography, or the salute ‘Za dom spremni’,” Blagovčanin said.

Through this TV report in the central news programme of RTV Herceg-Bosne, it has once again become evident that in today’s media — and in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society more broadly — there are no serious foreign policy commentators who possess the knowledge, independence and necessary political distance when discussing global events, according to Borka Rudić.

In this particular case, she added, the interviewees’ comments are assumptions without clear argumentation, accompanied by the media use of photographs from events in Bosnia and Herzegovina and from a dinner at the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo, which are not unlawful because, as she noted, Iran has its own embassies and developed diplomatic relations around the world, including with Croatia. She also points out that it is particularly worrying that religious customs — the iftar, the meal taken during Ramadan — are being deliberately manipulated for political conclusions and for linking the war in the Middle East with Sarajevo, that is, for the anathematization of Muslims and the entire Bosniak people in this city.

“This is also manipulative media content because images of protests in Sarajevo with Palestinian flags are repeatedly shown during the TV report — protests that have taken place several times in world capitals, including Sarajevo — which may lead the public to believe that these were protests in support of Iran, even though it was stated at the beginning of the report that the announced rally in support of Iran had been cancelled. It should also be pointed out that the report displays journalistic one-sidedness, since the people being talked about were not given an opportunity to present their views, which is unacceptable in journalism in general because it runs counter to journalistic ethics, and is particularly unacceptable as a journalistic approach in news programmes such as the main news bulletin,” Rudić concluded.