Iran's English-language news channel has fallen victim to stepped-up sanctions against the defiant Islamic nation. The 24-hour channel, Press TV, has been dropped from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform, which carries its signal to the U.S. and Canada. In a statement on Saturday, Press TV called the action a flagrant violation of freedom of speech. The channel also operates a website at www.presstv.ir. Its European satellite distributor, Eutelsat, dropped it last October. In a statement on Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Asghar Khaji maintained that Western sanctions on Iran are futile, adding that they do more damage to the countries that impose them. He insisted again that Iran is a committed co-signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that it has no plans to build an atomic weapon, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities without producing any evidence that its nuclear program has a military objective.