The Islamic Republic’s Media Influence Operations

Throughout its history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has exploited the free airwaves of the West to aggressively shape the way Americans and Europeans view the regime. These efforts—on display again last week with CNN’s fawning interview in Davos with Vice-President for Strategic Affairs Javad Zarif—have had modest success largely due to the cruelty and barbarity of the ayatollahs which speak louder than their spokespersons. However, they have skewed the way Westerners understand the internal dynamics of the Islamic Republic—inflating the power of its president, shielding the supreme leader, dispensing propaganda, and creating the perception that there is an organic battle between so-called “reformists” and conservatives which has the potential to change Iran. More alarming is the uncontested regularity with which American and European media platform the Islamic Republic’s functionaries. 

The Iranian regime has many tools with which it engages in influence operations for Western audiences. Its Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization do so in cyberspace and on social media. They push messaging meant to undermine Israel and the United States and to create social fissures in the West. 

It has also been documented that Iran’s Foreign Ministry has sought to cultivate Western analysts and media to magnify the Islamic Republic’s preferred narrative. During the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal from 2013-15, Iran’s diplomats endeavored to form networks of individuals who worked at leading think tanks and had access to policymakers and the media to assist. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative. Leaked emails reveal a keen desire to place opinion pieces in leading news outlets that were sympathetic to Iranian strategy. One analyst in Germany allegedly even offered to ghostwrite the articles. But there was never any disclosure. 

As a part of these efforts, Iranian officials make themselves available for softball interviews with the Western press. It has become a tradition at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September that the Islamic Republic’s visiting diplomats appear on American media outlets to engage in malign information operations—seeking to lie, create false equivalencies between the U.S. and Iranian political systems, and weaponize segments of American public opinion in furtherance of the Islamic Republic’s interests. 

For years, Western newspapers and magazines have published essays by Iranian officials. For instance, Foreign Affairs has carried three pieces by Javad Zarif, who was sanctioned by the U.S. government when he was foreign minister, alone since 2014. Yet Foreign Affairs has published not one piece from his counterparts from other American adversaries like China and Russia during that same time. Other Iranian officials—including presidents and ministers—have also penned screeds in leading outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times. But representatives from Moscow and Beijing do not author pieces for Western media with as much regularity as their partners in Tehran. It raises serious questions as to the broader agenda at play from Iran.

The Western networks are likely not purposely snubbing China and Russia. However, it does speak to a highly irregular pattern of hosting Islamic Republic officials, in comparison to other foreign officials, who evidently see value in using American and European freedom of the press to advance the interests of an enemy government.

In September 2024, the U.S. government inexplicably granted a visa to Zarif himself during the U.N. General Assembly despite him being sanctioned and not being a sitting president or foreign minister. Curiously while in Manhattan, Zarif spent much of his time on a media tour, giving multiple interviews, so much so that he did not even accompany his boss President Masoud Pezeshkian during his engagements.

Over the last two months alone, as President Trump prepared to assume power, Foreign Affairs and The Economist published essays by Zarif, CNN interviewed him at the World Economic Forum at Davos last week, NBC News traveled to Iran to interview Pezeshkian, and so did Sky News to interview Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. This speaks to a concerted Iranian effort to manipulate Western public opinion so that they perceive Tehran as being open to meaningful dialogue, diplomacy, “win-win” solutions, and engagement with “mutual respect.” But despite the soaring rhetoric and grand promises, the Iranian officials whom Western media are interviewing hold no real decision-making power in Tehran. This is all to lure the U.S. government into an endless diplomatic process to thwart the invocation of the U.N. snapback sanctions mechanism, as it expires in October, and pressure when Iran is likely not prepared to make the level of concessions necessary to satisfy U.S. and European leaders. 

This also forms the basis of an adversary information operation as it will cause other Western analysts amplify its messaging to advocate for diplomacy with Iran. For example, after Zarif’s Foreign Affairs piece went live where he dangled that Iran is “ready for equal-footed negotiations on the nuclear deal—and potentially more,” the magazine then published another essay by a prominent American commentator who cited Zarif’s piece as evidence that a broader diplomatic arrangement with Iran—that encompasses its nuclear program and regional posture—is possible, especially after the damage it has suffered in recent months from Israeli military operations. However, a close reading of the positions espoused by real Iranian decision-makers—like the supreme leader and the IRGC—would suggest that is fanciful. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported Iran in talks in Geneva in January rejected European efforts to include its ballistic missile program as a part of any future negotiations under the Trump administration with Tehran. 

Likewise, when Iranian officials are interviewed by Western media outlets, they are not subjected to aggressive cross examinations. Interviewers will ask about Tehran’s bloodstained record but will then not challenge the Iranian functionary when he engages in lies and disinformation. For example, in Pezeshkian’s NBC News interview, he denied that Iran had ever attempted to assassinate President Trump despite the supreme leader posting a video simulation and posters of Mr. Trump being targeted on his golf course on Khamenei’s social media channels. Yet NBC’s Lester Holt never confronted Pezeshkian with such evidence. 

CNN likewise did not challenge Zarif this week after he called well-documented Iranian assassination plots against a former U.S. national security advisor “bogus” and claimed Iran did not know about the October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas when there is evidence of foreknowledge. The appearance in Davos resembled more of a speech than an interview.

This is not to argue that Western media should never interview Iranian officials. But it becomes problematic when it happens repeatedly, and their propaganda goes unchallenged. With Iranian officials likely eyeing another invitation to the prestigious Munich Security Conference, from which they have been disinvited in the past, as it prepares to convene in February, the organizers should learn from the experience in Davos and refuse to host Iranian officials. 

Jason M. Brodsky is the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).