Al-Manar () is a Lebanese satellite television station owned and operated by the political party Hezbollah, broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon. The channel was launched on 4 June 1991 and it is a member of the Arab States Broadcasting Union. Al-Manar was designated as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity", and banned by the United States on 17 December 2004. On 22 June 2021, the official Al-Manar website domain as well as dozens of other Arab news network domains related to Iran, Lebanon and Syria were shut down by the U.S. government for spreading disinformation and in cooperation with the U.S. government, Al-Manar is banned from multiple U.S based media platforms which include YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit etc. It has also been banned by France Spain, and Germany, and has run into some service and license problems outside Lebanon, making it unavailable in the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia, while it has not officially been banned in any of these regions. History Al-Manar first began terrestrial broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon on 4 June 1991. In 2000 the station also began broadcasting via satellite. The station was located in the predominantly Shi'a neighborhood of Haret Hreik in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the Hezbollah is also headquartered. Originally, the station employed only a few men that had studied media in London during the mid-1980s. But almost a year later, Al-Manar was employing over 150 people. Initially, Al Manar would broadcast only five hours per day. Shortly before the 1992 election, it began broadcasting regular news bulletins in order to help Hezbollah attain more votes and spread its message to more people. In 1993, the station expanded its broadcasting to seven hours a day and extended its signal to the southern part of the Bekaa Valley. Ahead of the 1996 Lebanese parliamentary elections, additional antennas were erected in Northern Lebanon and throughout the Mount Lebanon range, so that the station could be viewed not only in Lebanon, but also in western Syria and northern Israel. Broadcasting was extended to 20 hours in 1998 but reduced to 18 hours in 2000. In 1996, the Lebanese government granted broadcasting licenses to only five television stations, not including Al-Manar. Approximately 50 stations were forced to close at the time. Several stations appealed the government's decision, but only four of them were finally granted licenses, one of which was Al-Manar. On 18 September, the Lebanese Cabinet decided