In recent years, social media has frequently announced the removal of hundreds of fake accounts, groups, and pages originating in Iran for engaging in “coordinated manipulation.” These actions, taken by Facebook and Twitter, have been followed on at least one occasion by a sharp reaction from Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Javad Zarif.
It is highly amusing that Zarif complained that the suspended accounts belonged to real Iranian users — as if he were in touch with hundreds of disgruntled locals who had been banished from Twitter. And it is doubly amusing, given the fact that all social networks are blocked in Iran by government authorities.
Take this, along with a close reading of Iran-related stories in the English-language media, as a sign that the regime is heavily engaged in psychological warfare through the spread of disinformation — at times aided by Western journalists and even the U.S. government.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, the architect of the Iranian regime’s disinformation campaign, started his diplomatic career in 1982 as an adviser at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. He became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in August 2013.
One month after becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zarif began his disinformation campaign in a Twitter exchange with Christine Pelosi who is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, and a member of Democratic National Committee, which he claimed, “Iran never denied Holocaust.” Of course, this is not true: the Holocaust has been repeatedly denied by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the main decision-maker on Iran’s foreign policy. Thus, through a Twitter exchange with a DNC political strategist, Zarif’s disinformation campaign had commenced.
Zarif effectively based Iran’s disinformation campaign on the old KGB playbook, particularly in terms of its strategies with Western Media. He focused on those who shape public opinion, such as journalists, artists, publishers, academics and businessmen, and in this he was aided by his decades of living in the U.S.
The Iran nuclear deal was Zarif’s biggest project yet, and the U.S. government actually helped him in the effort. As David Samuels explained in an article in the New York Times Magazine, the Obama administration tried to mislead the public and media by claiming that “a ‘moderate’ faction inside the Iranian regime beat ‘hard-liners’ in an election and then began to pursue a policy of ‘openness’, which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program.”
Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for President Obama, was the conductor of this orchestra. “We created an echo chamber,” he told the New York Times Magazine. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.” He added. NIAC is one of the organizations that helped arrange the Iran deal. Trita Parsi, the one-time president of NIAC and one of its founders, met with the Obama administration 33 times from 2013 to 2016, according to White House visitor logs. Patrick Disney, who worked as policy director at NIAC, later became a member of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the same year the Obama administration started secret negotiations with the Iranian regime.
Last November, Reuters reported that “more than 70 websites which look like media outlets…are actually a channel for Iranian propaganda and fake news.” Reuters correspondent Jack Stubbs put it thus: “Often people ask if the influence operations actually have any real-world impact. And in the case of the Iranian campaign, we can say yes it has.”
The disinformation campaign continues, and it seems the Trump Administration has taken it seriously. Trump has banned Iranians from traveling to the U.S. by issuing an executive order, all while a significant number of families of high ranking Iranian officials are living in the states. The U.S. government has imposed heavy sanctions on Iran, stating that its goal is not to harm the people but to change the regime’s behavior.
Recently, there have been some demonstrations and strikes in Iran. The U.S. State Department denies that this is part of a regime change project on its part, or an attempt to bring the Iranian regime back to the negotiating table. But some of these actions, like the travel ban and sanctions, have already fed the Iranian regime’s disinformation campaign.
The presence of senior U.S. government officials on Twitter is perhaps partly an attempt to respond to this campaign. The State Department has a Twitter account in Persian, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who appears to be Trump’s point man for Iranian affairs, tweets and hashtags about Iran even in Persian.
“Shame on #FakeNewsweek for helping @JZarif spread lies,” he tweeted at one point. “The truth is: the U.S. does not, and never did, sanction food and medicine. They are exempt from sanctions, as are financial transactions related to humanitarian needs,” Pompeo tweeted.
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Zarif, calling him a “propaganda minister” rather than a diplomat. Mike Pompeo also called him Khamenei’s “chief apologist.” Subsequently, during Zarif’s stay in New York to attend the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, the U.S. imposed tight travel restrictions on him.
The Iranian regime’s desire to deal with a Democratic administration in the White House has been proclaimed frequently, and Iranian interference in U.S. elections is evident. On Oct. 4, Microsoft reported that it has found evidence that hackers linked to the Iranian government targeted accounts associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, in addition to journalists and U.S. government officials.
But the Islamic regime’s disinformation campaign will not be limited to this. The regime will continue its ideological subversion campaign because this regime doesn’t believe in the western concept of national sovereignty, and its survival depends on the spread of its ideology.
Source » washingtonexaminer