AI lies and bot armies: Israeli online plot to crown fake Iranian ‘prince’ exposed

By Kit Klarenberg

On October 3, Haaretz published an investigation, exposing how, for years, the Zionist entity has clandestinely conducted dedicated “online operations” to promote the “public image” of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former West-backed monarch, locally and internationally.

The attempts were highly sophisticated and wide-ranging, harnessing artificial intelligence, social media manipulation of every sort, and other online warfare techniques intended to convince audiences that Pahlavi was Tehran’s exiled “rightful ruler-in-waiting.”

Hundreds of bogus online personae, with AI-created profile photos and fraudulent biographies, calling for the restoration of the monarchy and sharing photos and videos of Pahlavi, were run by a shadow battalion of Persian-speakers specifically recruited by Israeli intelligence for the project.

Bot and troll networks amplified their output, with campaign messaging constantly updated based on audience analysis. Another component of the online blitzkrieg was concerned with glorifying Gila Gamliel, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime and Tel Aviv’s “point person with Pahlavi.”

The network got busted by independent digital researchers as a result of Gamliel posting an AI-generated video on social media platforms, titled “Next Year in Free Tehran”.

The fictional clip, published on June 15 - three days into the Zionist entity’s botched 12 Day War on Iran and coincidentally the same day Netanyahu forecast imminent “regime change” in Iran - “had massive exposure, most of which was likely inorganic.”

It depicted Netanyahu, his wife, Gamliel, her partner, Pahlavi and his wife walking through Tehran’s streets.

The video received many more views than most of the minister’s X posts, and these and other attempts to amplify it helped researchers locate a network of bots and fake users amplifying Gamliel’s frequent calls for 'regime change' in Iran and her ties to the Pahlavi clan.

“Many of these accounts were opened in 2022, at the height of the so-called Hijab protests in Iran,” Haaretz reported. Over 100 allied accounts were opened during the recent imposed war to boost the malignant network’s output further.

Haaretz cryptically reveals, “This doesn’t appear to be the only campaign operating on this issue from Israel."

Still, the outlet’s bombshell disclosures confirm that the Zionist entity - if not other hostile foreign powers, including the US - was covertly engaged in expansive psychological warfare initiatives to manufacture consent for Pahlavi’s installation as Iran’s ruler at two critical junctures in recent history, when “regime change” in Tehran was being openly promoted by Israeli regime officials, Western governments, and the mainstream media.

Those attempts floundered badly. While Pahlavi is almost always given positive coverage by Western news outlets, he enjoys no support among Iran’s population at home, and even the vast majority of the Iranian diaspora rejects any suggestion of him taking power in the country.

In fact, his reputation is so poisonous that his endorsement is a decisive kiss of death for any challenge to Tehran’s government. That vast resources were - and perhaps remain - invested by the Zionist entity in such a futile endeavour ranks as an embarrassing failure of epic proportions.

Monarchist accounts

Further detail on Israeli online dark arts regarding Pahlavi is provided by a July 2023 report from data analytics firm Social Forensics on “state-sponsored platform manipulation” during the 2022 riots in Iran, engineered by the West.

The investigation concluded that Tehran was the victim of wide-ranging cyberwarfare operations throughout this period, including “disinformation, smears, and threats” emanating from a vast nexus of bots and trolls on Twitter. While the report did not make a definitive attribution for this malign activity, its findings point unambiguously in Tel Aviv’s direction.

Social Forensics identified several clear, separate “communities” of weaponised accounts targeting the Islamic Republic during this period, such as “progressives”. However, the most influential community was “monarchists”.

All accounts in this category had significant followings, and their output generated sizeable engagement, both inauthentic and organic. Thousands of supposed users boasted crown emojis in their display names, denoting their monarchist allegiance. In all, over 95 percent of these accounts were found to be automated “sockpuppets” by Social Forensics:

“Most…are inauthentic and function to flood Twitter with monarchist, pro-Pahlavi imagery and content to make it seem like there is a larger base of monarchist supporters on Twitter than reality reflects,” the report states.

In March 2023, hundreds of pro-Pahlavi bots were suspended for violating Twitter/X rules after engaging in platform manipulation. Despite many quickly resurfacing with almost identical usernames and continuing their wrecking activities, several prominent anti-Tehran figures condemned the mass ban of automated agitators.

Among them was Alireza Nader, formerly a senior apparatchik at notorious, pro-Pahlavi Zionist lobby group the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and opaquely-funded exile organisation National Union for Democracy in Iran. Social Forensics found he followed and amplified several inauthentic monarchist accounts.

The analytics firm also discovered numerous official Israeli regime accounts on the platform that likewise followed the most influential pro-Pahlavi sockpuppets. Strikingly, one out of every eight accounts followed by @IsraelPersian, which targets Iranian audiences, was “inauthentic monarchist accounts”, advocating “for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the return of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to the country as the leader of a constitutional monarchy.”

But indications of Tel Aviv’s management of this belligerent bot network don’t end there.

An authentic user followed by @IsraelPersia, among other official Zionist entity accounts, is Emily Schrader, CEO of digital marketing agency Social Lite Creative.

At the time of Social Forensics’ investigation, her company’s website openly boasted of working with “high-level government organizations and NGOs in Israel, including the IDF (Israeli occupation army).”

The analytics firm’s probe concluded Schrader’s follower count “is inflated and her tweets are artificially amplified by the same inauthentic accounts” calling for insurrection in Iran, including monarchist bots.

Peddling distrust

Schrader avowedly counting multiple Israeli regime entities, including its genocidal military, as clients is sufficient grounds to postulate Tel Aviv was ultimately responsible for the pro-monarchist “platform manipulation” campaign.

Just as suspiciously, the protests they accompanied were launched following the Pentagon's clandestine online war against Iran for years prior. Again, these efforts were exposed by digital researchers after Twitter and Meta banned a vast network of US military-run accounts that “used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives” in Central and West Asia.

Iran was a preponderant target, with Pentagon psyops specialists managing multiple anti-government media outlets publishing content in Farsi with accompanying social media channels, and a panoply of bot and troll accounts.

These personae frequently posted non-political content, including Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food, to enhance their authenticity. They also engaged with real Iranians on Twitter, often joking about mundane topics such as internet memes. The sockpuppets span a wide ideological spectrum, employing diverse narrative techniques for various audiences.

For example, some ‘Iranian’ Pentagon bots and trolls promoted “hardliner” views, criticising the Islamic Republic for being too liberal domestically, and inadequately aggressive in asserting its interests regionally. Others posed as left-wingers, secularists and other opposition elements.

It was a full-spectrum digital propaganda attack on Tehran. Eerily, many of these accounts promoted women’s rights and protests against Islamic dress. One Pentagon-circulated meme compared the treatment of women abroad with Iran by contrasting photos of Western female astronauts alongside an alleged local victim of violent domestic abuse.

Hijab smearing was a core symbol of protests that subsequently erupted in Tehran, which elicited blanket foreign media coverage and a chorus of calls for “regime change” in Iran.

Quickly, Pahlavi and close allies such as Masih Alinejad, a veteran of US-funded propaganda efforts targeting Tehran, who has called for Zionist entity attacks on the Islamic Republic and assassination of its leaders, quickly proclaimed themselves to be leading the demonstrators. However, their attempt to commandeer the riots resulted in the unrest’s termination in Iran.

A withering post-mortem of why Iran’s ‘woman, life, freedom’ revolution failed, authored by Zionist lobby-connected Mariam Memarsadeghi, who similarly promotes “regime change” in Tehran, pinned the blame squarely on Pahlavi’s attempt to associate himself so intimately with the riots.

She noted the fake prince’s associates push extreme “Iranian nationalism”, calling for “retributive violence [and] summary executions” of enemies, while “peddling distrust and attacking other opposition leaders on social media.” These activities gravely alienated Iranians within and without the country, leaving Pahlavi irreparably tarnished.

In April 2023, Pahlavi made a surprise appearance in Tel Aviv. Despite eliciting zero Western media interest, Israeli news outlets eagerly promoted his appearance as of earth-shattering significance. The Times of Israel claimed the “historic” visit was a “healing process for many Iranian Jews,” leaving them with a “unique sense of joy, optimism, and a feeling of healing.”

At a press conference, Pahlavi was asked about the response his trip there was receiving from average Iranians. He declared their vehement support was provably clear:

“Don’t take my word for it, search on social media...on Twitter, Instagram, any platform. If you do the research yourself, you don’t need to ask me the question. The answer is right before your eyes.”

Of course, that “answer” was provided by people who don’t exist, courtesy of “online operations” conducted by Israel, and likely other states seeking regime change in Iran.

Evidently undeterred by the 2022 campaign’s faltering, Pahlavi was again fraudulently promoted by a Zionist-orchestrated social media campaign during the 12 Day War, wholly counterproductively.

A July report from Tel Aviv’s so-called Institute for National Security Studies acknowledged monarchist backing for insurrection during that imposed war only strengthened local support for the government, “rallying the public around the flag.”

It concluded: “It is therefore advisable to avoid ties, when possible, with Iranian opposition groups (including some monarchist circles in the diaspora) who are perceived by large segments of the Iranian public as tainted and having betrayed Iran in its time of need.

"Although aligning with pro-Western and pro-Israel diaspora groups that push for revolutionary change may seem natural, such associations may, in fact, undermine the credibility of internal opposition and ultimately obstruct the desired outcome.”

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk