Tehran has deployed a new front on Western social media, including a covert influence campaign to sway Americans and undermine President Donald Trump's push for a nuclear deal, experts warned Sunday.
Following the February U.S. strikes on Iran that decapitated much of Tehran's leadership and the signing of an interim memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Tehran and Washington, the analysts also claim Iranian officials are relying more on digital proxies to project centralized control.
"Iran's leadership now lives on X because it is a decapitated leadership," counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.
"The regime has moved its legitimacy contest onto a platform, and once you are fighting there, you optimize for it," Mohammed, of the George Washington Program on Extremism, added.
"There are English, screenshot-ready lines, memeable contempt and civilizational pride. It is adaptation under pressure — an influence operation forced by the fact that the men running Iran can no longer stand at a podium."
After Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on Feb. 28, the regime's senior leadership was largely eliminated, and the new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is in hiding. Mohammed said Iran's digital messaging has since become more centralized.
"The coordination between the leadership is visible: You watch the same lines reposted verbatim by the judiciary chief, the vice president and the security council within minutes," the expert explained.
"That is a central media shop pushing copy, not officials independently moved by the same spirit at the same moment. And the register gives it away."
According to Mohammed, the regime's X accounts serve as a manufactured proxy for the leadership vacuum while exploiting political divisions in the United States, a strategy that he says surfaced even more after Trump signed a new peace deal on June 17 in Versailles.
This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News' Emma Bussey.
Posted by Anders Hagstrom
