It's yet another strange manifestation of "cyberwarfare". Since there's no international agreements restricting it we're only going to see more. Controlling what another country's citizens watch (and how much they pay for it!) is a lot of power.

(See also Facebook's sudden decision to ban foreign political ads in the Irish referendum)

for sure -- though it's hard for me to feel too bad for a state-sponsored TV channel when the feed is stolen by state-sponsored pirate.

AIUI industrial-scale broadcast piracy is also the norm within Iran