"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The conspiracist narrative of foreign agents leading a plot to overthrow the regime of the Mullahs denies the Iranian people’s uprising — and is ricocheting across the disinformation ecosystem
Thousands of demonstrators shot behind closed doors − with multiple reports that more than 16,500 people have been killed — hundreds of thousands injured, hundreds of executions scheduled. The repression unleashed against the Iranian people by the regime of the Mullahs has reached terrifying proportions. Faced with this methodical state violence, Ayatollah Khamenei and his henchmen have rolled out a highly predictable propaganda strategy. Their goal is to persuade the public domestically and internationally that Iranian protesters killed by regime militias and other security forces were in fact victims of a so-called “seditious” plot to overthrow the Ayatollahs “orchestrated by the US” — and Zionists.
“Agents of the US and the Zionist regime committed heinous crimes in this sedition,” the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution said on X. “American and Zionist agents committed major crimes. They destroyed 250 mosques and 250 educational centres; they damaged the electricity industry and attacked banks and medical facilities; they killed thousands of people.”
This narrative, emanating from a regime on the brink, finds eager and complicit echoes within the professional disinformation ecosystem. From the ‘anti-imperialist’ anti-western far left Max Blumenthal and his conspiracy-laden Jew-baiting, dictator apologist site The Grayzone, to far right antisemitic hate merchant Candace Owens, and across the conspiracy sphere, a cast of online influencers have been zealously relaying the talking points issued by the Tehran authorities.
Ayatollah Khamenei regime propagandist Max Blumenthal spreads vile denial of massacres of Iranians rising up against the Mullahs (that have financial links to his Grayzone conspiracist Jew-hate site).
Blames Israel-US 'psyop'.
Read more ✏️Conspiracy Watch https://t.co/RtX8sGJf93 pic.twitter.com/CAM0V1ADS3— Emma-Kate Symons (@eksymons) January 14, 2026
Whether in Moscow or Caracas, Damascus or Tehran, the same scenario repeats itself with mechanical regularity: downplay the repression, criminalise the opposition, and invoke the spectre of foreign interference. Any popular uprising against an authoritarian regime can only be framed as a “color revolution” orchestrated by the “American-Zionist axis.” In this worldview, peoples are denied any autonomous political will. Iranians who take to the streets at the risk of their lives can thus be portrayed as “agent provocateurs” and rioters in the pay of the nation’s enemies — in short, a fifth column.
This tactic serves a very specific political purpose: to discourage any form of international solidarity with Iranian protesters. And the worst part is that it works. Support in the western and in the Middle East and across the world for the Iranian people struggling against the criminal dictatorship that oppresses them is struggling to mobilise protesters and solidarity at a level commensurate with the stakes.
In the face of the cruelty of these massacres constituting likely crimes against humanity, the responsibility of a media outlet such as ours is twofold: to document the facts and to rigorously analyse the conspiracist rhetoric unfolding before our eyes. This is a matter not only of the public’s right to be informed, but also of the memory of the victims.
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