Iran has initiated a covert social media influence campaign aimed at swaying American public opinion and undermining President Donald Trump's efforts to secure a nuclear deal, according to counterterrorism experts. Analysts suggest that the regime is increasingly relying on digital proxies on platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) to project centralized control and influence.
Following what experts describe as a decapitation of much of its leadership, Iran's government has shifted its influence operations online. Dr. Omar Mohammed, of the George Washington Program on Extremism, stated that the regime now operates on X because its traditional leadership structures have been compromised. He noted that the content is optimized for the platform, featuring English-language, easily shareable material designed to resonate with a Western audience.
"The regime has moved its legitimacy contest onto a platform, and once you are fighting there, you optimize for it," Mohammed told Fox News Digital. "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."
Mohammed highlighted that the visible coordination between Iranian officials on social media, with identical messages posted by various leaders within minutes, indicates a centralized media operation rather than organic communication. This strategy, he believes, has intensified since President Trump signed a new peace deal on June 17.
The campaign appears to target different factions within Washington. "Tehran is not aiming at the United States as a single entity," Mohammed explained. "It reads Washington as two power centers and pitches to both — working to embarrass the deal the president owns while speaking the language of multipolarity back to the worldview it attributes to the vice president."
An example of this strategy emerged following Trump's announcement that unfrozen Iranian assets would be used to purchase American agricultural products. Iran's lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mocked the claim on X, calling it "trash talks" and suggesting the only crop Iran harvests is "decades of mistrust." Mohammed interpreted this as a direct jab at Trump, designed to embarrass him by criticizing the deal he personally promoted to American farmers.
Alp Toker, of internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, noted that regimes like Iran's are becoming adept at asymmetric information warfare, combining social media, AI, and internet censorship. He described a dual system where officials have open access to international platforms to push their agenda, while citizens at home face strict internet restrictions.
"These regimes are learning to combine social media, AI and internet censorship as tools for asymmetric information warfare, benefiting from a global audience while sidestepping accountability to their own citizens," Toker said. "There is a two-tier system in which government officials can use the platform freely to promote their agenda while denying access to their citizens, as they do in Iran."
This disparity between heavily censored domestic internet access and an open online presence aimed at Western audiences provides strong evidence that the social media activity constitutes an external influence operation, according to Mohammed.