Iran runs covert social media campaign to undermine Trump deal, experts say

Experts warned Sunday that Tehran has opened a new front on Western social media, including a secret influence campaign, to influence Americans and undermine President Donald Trump’s push for a nuclear deal.

Following the February US strikes on Iran that eliminated much of Tehran’s leadership and the signing of an interim memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Tehran and Washington, analysts also claim that Iranian officials are increasingly relying on digital proxies to project central control.

“Iran’s leadership now lives in X because it is a decapitated leadership,” the counterterrorism expert said. Dr. Omer Muhammad he told Fox News Digital.

“The regime has put the fight for legitimacy on one platform, and when you start fighting there, you optimize accordingly,” said George Washington’s Muhammad. Program of Extremismadded.

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“There’s English, screen-ready lines, imitable disdain and civilized pride. It’s an adaptation under pressure, an influence operation forced by the fact that the men who run Iran can no longer stand at the podium.”

Following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on February 28, the regime’s top leaders have been largely eliminated and the new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is in hiding. Iran’s digital messaging has since become more centralized, Mohammed said.

“Coordination between the leadership is clearly visible: within minutes you watch the same lines rebroadcast verbatim by the judiciary chief, the vice president and the security council,” the expert said.

“This is not authorities acting independently in the same spirit at the same time, but a centralized media outlet printing copies. And that’s what the record conveys.”

According to Muhammad, the regime’s X accounts serve as a manufactured proxy for the leadership vacuum while exploiting political divisions in the United States; According to Mohammed, this strategy surfaced even more after Trump signed a new peace treaty in Versailles on June 17.

“Tehran is not targeting the United States as a single entity,” Mohammed said.

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New Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and President Donald Trump are portrayed side by side as opposing figures in the Middle East. (Vahid Salemi/AP; Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)

“He reads Washington as two centers of power and appeals to both, trying to embarrass the deal the president has, while speaking the language of multipolarity in the worldview he attributes to the vice president.”

For example, after the signing and the first round of negotiations in Switzerland, Trump said on Truth Social that unfrozen Iranian assets would be used to buy American agricultural products, including soybeans, wheat and corn.

He wrote that the Treasury Department would place Iranian assets in “U.S.-controlled trust and be used solely to purchase U.S. food and medical supplies, including corn, wheat, and soybeans from our major American farmers.” “These are things Iran desperately needs.”

Posts by the regime’s chief negotiator, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, derided the allegations as “empty talk”.

Ghalibaf wrote to

“The agriculture coup is aimed squarely at Trump, who personally sold the release of frozen assets to American farmers as a windfall for corn and soybeans, so mocking ‘GMO soybeans and broken promises’ is meant to embarrass the deal he has,” Muhammad said. he said.

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Vance told Fox News Digital that the US-Iran deal tests whether Tehran will trade decades of isolation for sanctions relief and renewed relations with the West. (Fox News Digital)

“Tehran will win if it can discredit the deal the president sold,” he added.

“This is not a 64-year-old Iranian speaker who is also writing for himself; this is a young social media team writing on his behalf,” Mohammed said. he said.

Muhammad also stated that Trump’s posts belonged to him and that “the account and the man are the same.”

“Iran’s statements are just the opposite. They come from an institution that produces public presence for a leadership that can no longer appear in person,” he said.

While ordinary Iranian citizens face strict internet restrictions in their home country, Tehran’s elite enjoy open access to foreign platforms aimed at Western audiences.

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Analysts warn that Tehran is opening a new front on Western social media, including an influence campaign, to influence Americans and undermine President Donald Trump’s push for a deal. (Hamed Malekpour / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Alp Toker from the internet monitoring company NetBlocksHe told Fox News Digital that the regime has “learned” about asymmetric information warfare.

“These regimes are learning to combine social media, artificial intelligence, and internet censorship as tools of asymmetric information warfare, leveraging a global audience while avoiding accountability to their own citizens,” he said.

“There is a two-tiered system where government officials can freely use the platform to promote their own agenda while denying their citizens access, as is the case in Iran.

“It’s a double-edged sword; you get more open politics at the expense of regime propaganda.

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“Iranian officials, among others, are getting better at gaming this system,” Toker added.

Mohammed said the parallel systems – the heavily censored internet at home and what he described as an “open megaphone” aimed at Western audiences – provided the strongest evidence that the campaign was a foreign influence operation rather than organic local speech.