The Ghost of 1979: How Iran Recycles Revolutionary-Era Propaganda in Its Modern Information War

Tehran's information apparatus did not emerge from the digital age. Its core messaging — anti-American imperialism, manufactured martyrdom, "resistance axis" solidarity, and Western-hypocrisy whataboutism — was first systematized during the 1979 hostage crisis and the eight-year war with Iraq. What has changed is the delivery mechanism. The same ideological scaffolding now operates across dozens of languages, on platforms from Instagram to TikTok, and increasingly with AI-generated content. The budget to support it has tripled in five years.

The Architects and Their Playbook

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the state's flagship propaganda network, has operated continuously since the revolution. It broadcasts eight international television channels in more than 30 languages, including English (Press TV), Spanish (HispanTV), and Arabic (Al-Alam), alongside radio programs reaching the Middle East, Europe, and Africa [1]. IRIB's mandate has always been ideological: to project the revolution's narrative abroad.

One figure who illustrates the continuity between eras is Mohammad Marandi, a University of Tehran professor and one of the founders of Press TV [2]. Marandi also serves as an adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team in Vienna. In 2020, leaked emails showed that Marandi formally proposed creating non-Persian-language news websites with no visible ties to the Iranian regime, describing them as "covert instruments to spread disinformation and misinformation while obscuring any connection with Iran's state media or intelligence apparatus" [2]. IranWire described him as "one of the staunchest defenders of the Islamic Republic in English-language media" [2].

The techniques Marandi and IRIB use have direct lineage to the revolution. During the 1979 hostage crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini popularized the "Great Satan" narrative and framed all opposition as American plotting, drawing on memories of the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Prime Minister Mosaddegh [3]. The "propaganda of deed" — using dramatic confrontations to generate global media attention — was central to the students' seizure of the US embassy [3]. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the regime developed martyrdom narratives to sustain domestic morale, framing battlefield deaths as religious sacrifice.

These frameworks persist. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies documented that after October 7, 2023, Iranian influence operations immediately surged, combining "resistance axis" framing with manufactured martyrdom narratives about Palestinian casualties [4]. Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center attributed the majority of Iran's cyber-enabled influence operations to Aria Sepehr Ayandehsazan (ASA), an IRGC-affiliated front company that runs hacktivist personas and coordinates social media amplification campaigns [5].

The Money Behind the Message

Tehran tripled IRIB's annual budget for 2025, earmarking approximately $480 million for the organization — the largest allocation in its history [6]. This figure represents an increase from roughly $220 million in 2020, a trajectory that reflects the regime's prioritization of propaganda infrastructure even amid severe economic constraints [7].

Source: Iran International / NCRI

Data as of Mar 1, 2025CSV

Proportional to its national budget, Iran spends roughly fifty times as much as the United States does on international broadcasting through the US Agency for Global Media [1]. That comparison, however, does not capture the full picture. Iran's spending sits between Russia's RT network, which received approximately $325 million (28.9 billion rubles) in 2024 state funding [8], and China's CGTN, whose total global spending is estimated at $700 million or more based on FARA filings and budget disclosures [9].

Source: Various (Statista, VOA, Iran International)

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

These numbers require context. RT operates a model that academic researchers have called a "partisan parasite," imitating domestic partisan media in target countries, while CGTN employs what scholars describe as "surface neutrality" — professional-looking coverage with pro-Beijing editorial lines [10]. Iran's approach is different: IRIB content is openly ideological, but the regime has increasingly invested in covert operations — fake news sites, inauthentic social media personas, and front organizations — that obscure their connection to Tehran [1].

October 7 and the Surge

The Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, marked an inflection point. Microsoft reported that "nearly all of Iran's major cyber actors" immediately pivoted to focus on Israel, with operations becoming "increasingly targeted and coordinated" [5]. The FDD tracked Iranian influence operations that deployed memes, fake news articles, and coordinated hashtag campaigns across platforms to amplify "resistance axis" messaging and undermine Israeli and Western narratives about the conflict [4].

Specific operations documented since October 2023 include:

• PRISONBREAK: Uncovered by Citizen Lab, this operation consisted of more than 50 inauthentic X (formerly Twitter) profiles spreading regime-change narratives using AI-generated content, synthetic profile pictures, and fabricated BBC Persian news screenshots. Created in 2023, these accounts became primarily active from January 2025 onward [11].

• Storm-2035: An Iranian group that operated four websites posing as American news outlets in 2024, using AI to repackage content from legitimate sources with pro-Iranian editorial framing [5].

• Cotton Sandstorm: An Iranian cyber group that Microsoft tracked as actively scouting US election-related websites and media outlets throughout 2024, preparing for direct influence operations targeting the presidential race [12].

• IRGC Trump campaign hack: In 2024, IRGC members compromised several accounts belonging to officials and advisors of a presidential campaign, then attempted to leak stolen material to journalists [13].

Israel's Shin Bet reported a 400 percent increase in counter-espionage arrests in 2024 compared with 2023, busting 13 Iranian cells and issuing 27 indictments against Israelis spying for Iran [4].

Platform Responses and Their Limits

Major platforms have taken repeated action against Iranian state-linked accounts. Meta removed Instagram and Facebook accounts belonging to Ayatollah Khamenei in early October 2023 for "repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy" [14]. YouTube terminated Iran's Foreign Ministry account and had previously suspended Press TV and HispanTV channels to comply with US sanctions [15]. In Q1 2025, Meta disrupted three covert influence operations originating from Iran, stating it "detected and removed these campaigns before they were able to build authentic audiences" [16].

Source: Meta Adversarial Threat Reports

Data as of Jun 1, 2025CSV

The measurable effect of these removals is contested. Meta's own reports indicate that most Iranian operations were caught before gaining significant traction — the company removed about 300 accounts and pages across Facebook and Instagram in one operation before the network "had gained a large following" [16]. But researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue documented that regime media, proxy accounts, and sympathetic Western commentators formed an "axis of amplification" that could reconstitute messaging networks quickly after takedowns [17].

Iran itself blocks all major social media platforms domestically while continuing to use them for external propaganda — a contradiction that critics in the diaspora frequently highlight [15].

The AI Factor

Iranian actors have begun integrating generative AI into their operations, though the extent and sophistication remain uneven. In February 2024, Microsoft reported detecting Iranian groups using large language models "to assist in social engineering, in troubleshooting software errors, and even in studying how intruders might evade detection in a compromised network" [18]. OpenAI disrupted an Iranian influence operation using ChatGPT accounts to generate long-form articles and social media comments aimed at influencing global political opinions [19].

The PRISONBREAK operation's use of AI-generated profile pictures and fabricated news screenshots represents one end of the spectrum [11]. At the other end, Microsoft noted that "many actors have pivoted back to techniques that have proven effective in the past — simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content, and use of trusted labels or logos atop false information" [12]. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that the Iran-Israel AI propaganda contest is "a warning to the world" about the trajectory of synthetic media in conflict [20].

Precise figures on what share of Iranian influence content is AI-generated versus AI-assisted versus manually produced are not publicly available from any single threat intelligence provider. The trend is clear — AI use is increasing — but claims about specific percentages should be treated with caution.

Academic Interest Tracks the Threat

Research output on Iranian propaganda and disinformation has grown substantially over the past decade, reflecting both the escalation of operations and increased scholarly attention to state-sponsored information warfare globally.

Source: OpenAlex

Data as of Jan 1, 2026CSV

Academic publications on the topic nearly quadrupled between 2017 (53 papers) and 2024 (520 papers), with 596 published in 2025 alone [21]. This surge in research coincides with — and partially drives — the policy response to Iranian influence operations.

The Case for Skepticism

Not everyone agrees that Iranian propaganda is as effective as threat reports suggest. The Atlantic Council's 2019 report on Iranian digital influence described the operations as "guerrilla broadcasting for the twenty-first century" — persistent but resource-constrained compared to Russian or Chinese equivalents [1]. Researchers from Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) noted that Iran's traditional "Big Lie" — blaming the United States for all opposition to the regime — "has lost its power of persuasion in recent years as the Iranian public gains access to global news online" [22].

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy assessed Iran's military propaganda as a mixed record of "failures and successes," noting that internal audiences increasingly distinguish between regime messaging and reality [23]. PolitiFact's 2026 analysis found that Iranian influence content is "biased and covertly placed but rarely wholly invented," representing "a different problem than disinformation in the traditional sense" [24].

The US government's own counter-propaganda efforts have their own track record of failure. The State Department's Iran Disinformation Project, launched in 2018 under the Global Engagement Center, was shelved in 2019 after its official Twitter account "began targeting and trolling journalists, activists and academics" [22].

These findings suggest that the threat from Iranian information operations is real but often overstated in ways that serve institutional interests — intelligence agencies seeking budgets, platform companies demonstrating vigilance, and think tanks justifying research programs. The public should weigh threat assessments against actual evidence of audience impact, which remains thin.

The Diaspora: Neither Monolith Nor Proxy

Iranian diaspora communities in the US, UK, and Germany occupy a complicated position. Germany's federal interior ministry warned in early 2026 that diaspora members face "intimidation and harassment by Iranian state actors, including possible cyber attacks," with regular reports of transnational repression [25]. The European Commission documented that Iran pursues "a calculated and often covert strategy to expand its ideological, cultural, and political influence across Europe, built not only on statecraft but on infiltration of diaspora networks, religious institutions, media outlets, and civil society organisations" [26].

At the same time, the diaspora has been one of the strongest sources of resistance to regime messaging. During the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, diaspora communities organized counter-narratives and amplified voices from inside Iran. Research published in Contemporary Politics found that the regime specifically targets "prominent opponents in the diaspora" through character assassination campaigns, seeking to "degrade and humiliate these individuals while eroding public trust" [27].

Treating the Iranian diaspora as a monolithic bloc — either as unwitting amplifiers or uniform resisters — misrepresents a community that includes regime supporters, apolitical immigrants, and some of the most vocal critics of Tehran's information apparatus. Peer-reviewed research on the net directional effect is limited, and overgeneralizing risks its own form of bias.

A Weakening Counter-Infrastructure

The US government's ability to counter Iranian information operations has been significantly degraded since early 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, established in 2017 by then-Director Christopher Wray, to "free resources to address more pressing priorities" [28]. The DOJ simultaneously curtailed criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), limiting prosecutions to cases resembling "traditional espionage" — a narrowing that excludes the kind of covert media influence that Iran specializes in [29].

The ODNI's Foreign Malign Influence Center, which issued regular election security updates documenting Iranian operations, was dissolved in August 2025 [30]. Nearly 300 FBI agents who worked on national security matters departed the bureau since early 2025 [30].

Prior enforcement actions had included OFAC designating seven individuals in September 2024 as part of a coordinated response to Iranian election interference operations [13]. The DOJ had indicted IRGC members for the Trump campaign hack and for assassination plots targeting former US officials and Iranian dissidents [31]. OFAC designated members of the IRGC-Qods Force involved in assassination plots in June 2023 [31].

The gap between the scale of Iranian operations and the current US enforcement posture is widening. Lawfare noted that Iran's capacity for retaliation inside the United States — including through information operations — may outpace the government's ability to detect it in time [30].

What Remains Unclear

Several aspects of Iran's information warfare remain difficult to assess with available evidence:

• Budget granularity: The $480 million IRIB figure covers broadcast operations but does not include IRGC cyber units, Quds Force influence programs, or proxy media operations through Hezbollah and other allied groups. Total spending on information warfare is likely higher but unquantifiable from open sources.

• Audience impact: Platform companies report removing accounts and networks, but independent measurement of whether Iranian messaging actually shifts opinions in target populations is scarce. Most evidence of "impact" comes from reach metrics (impressions, followers) rather than attitudinal research.

• AI trajectory: While AI use in Iranian operations is growing, the claim that this makes attribution harder is prospective rather than proven. Current AI-generated content from Iranian actors has generally been detectable by platform integrity teams.

• Coordination depth: The degree to which IRIB, the IRGC, the Ministry of Intelligence, and proxy organizations coordinate their messaging — versus operating as parallel but loosely aligned actors — is debated among analysts.

Iran's information war with the US and Israel is real, well-funded, and drawing on a propaganda tradition that predates the internet by decades. Whether it is effective enough to warrant the level of alarm it generates is a separate question — one that the available evidence does not definitively answer.