General Qasem Soleimani, killed this week, was the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force. This Force specialises in unconventional warfare and gathering military intelligence outside of Iran – supporting such groups as Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Its explicit mission is the “liberation of Muslim land” which is where it gets its Arabic name – al-Quds meaning “Jerusalem Force”.

If this all sounds like an anti-Israeli anti-Western terrorist organisation which supports our enemies, then you’d be right! Tehran, through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) was behind the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut which claimed the lives of 307 people. The IRG has long been supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with weapons which has caused the deaths of countless British and US troops). Iran’s support for rebels in Yemen is also well documented , as is their spying on potential Jewish and Israeli targets in Western countries.

However, despite all of this evidence, listening to the BBC’s coverage on Radio 4’s PM programme yesterday, it would be easy to think that this terrorist General’s killing was an outrageous act of unjustifiable aggression by Donald Trump and the US. Of all the various guest speakers only one spoke in defence of the killing, while the rest condemned the US. The line of questioning towards guests presented Trump as unreasonable and the killing completely unjustifiable. All of the General’s links to attacks on US targets were “alleged”.

Despite my own inevitable dismay at the BBC’s reporting, I was not surprised. The BBC seems to have spent the last 10 years repeatedly on the wrong side of history; whether being anti-Conservative, anti-Brexit, anti-Israeli, pro-EU and pro-Labour, the BBC is never happier than when they’re speaking against Britain’s national interest. Ofcom criticised the BBC’s bias just before Christmas when they found those on the political extremes tended to get more air time. It is disappointing that the BBC chooses to use the licence fee to fund these extremist views, it is even more terrifying that the BBC has now become Tehran’s useful idiots.

This recent example is just one in a long line of BBC failures. Even Downing Street has chosen to withdraw their engagement with the Radio 4s Today programme over their perpetual bias. It adds further weight to the debate of whether the BBC should continue to receive licence fee income, or indeed whether such a large state-monopoly has any place in the 21st Century.

Dr Peter Hill is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham