Iranian regime’s ‘hardline rhetoric’ under fire as US deal nears
President Donald Trump has taken a hard line on Iran’s deepening economic troubles and the future of nuclear talks, stressing that U.S. forces remain prepared if diplomacy breaks down. John Roberts and Sandra Smith reported from a White House Cabinet meeting where Trump pointed to Iran’s soaring inflation and the continued absence of sanctions relief. Dr. Mahsa Tehrani also raised doubts about whether the Islamic Republic can be trusted in negotiations.
Tehran is expanding its presence on Western social media platforms, including through what experts describe as a covert influence effort aimed at shaping American opinion and weakening Trump’s push for a nuclear agreement, analysts warned Sunday.
In the wake of February U.S. strikes on Iran that analysts say wiped out much of Tehran’s senior leadership, and following the signing of an interim memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran, experts contend Iranian officials are increasingly turning to digital proxies to project authority and maintain the appearance of centralized control.
“Iran’s leadership now lives on X because it is a decapitated leadership,” counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told News Agency.
“The regime has moved its legitimacy contest onto a platform, and once you are fighting there, you optimize for it,” added Mohammed, who is affiliated with the George Washington Program on Extremism.
The administration’s memorandum of understanding with Tehran has revealed divisions among Republicans over what should count as a successful outcome following the military campaign against Iran. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“There are English, screenshot-ready lines, memeable contempt and civilizational pride,” Mohammed said. “It is adaptation under pressure — an influence operation forced by the fact that the men running Iran can no longer stand at a podium.”
According to Mohammed, Iran’s online messaging has become more tightly coordinated since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on Feb. 28, much of the regime’s senior leadership was eliminated, and new leader Mojtaba Khamenei went into hiding.
“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.
“Tehran is not aiming at the United States as a single entity,” Mohammed said.
New Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and President Donald Trump are shown side by side as opposing figures in the Middle East. (Vahid Salemi/AP; Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
“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.”
EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham's Policies Poised to Benefit His Wife Financially
In the wake of the signing and the first round of negotiations in Switzerland, for example, Trump said on Truth Social that unfrozen Iranian assets would be used to buy American agricultural products, including soybeans, wheat and corn.
The Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the United States, and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including corn, wheat and soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.”
The regime’s posts from its lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mocked the claims as “trash talks.”
“America falsely claims our unfrozen assets will buy their agriculture. Interesting. The only crop we’re harvesting is what you planted: decades of mistrust. It’s organic, abundant, and homegrown. But apparently the U.S. only exports GMO soybeans, broken promises and trash talks,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.
“The agriculture jab is aimed straight at Trump, who personally sold the frozen-assets release to American farmers as a corn-and-soybean windfall, so mocking ‘GMO soybeans and broken promises’ is built to embarrass the deal he owns,” Mohammed claimed.
Vance tells News Agency the U.S.-Iran deal tests whether Tehran will trade decades of isolation for sanctions relief and renewed Western ties. (News Agency)
“Tehran gains if it can discredit the deal the president is selling,” he added.
“That is also not a 64-year-old Iranian speaker writing for himself; that is a young social media team writing in his name,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed also noted Trump’s posts are his own, with the “account and the man the same.”
“The Iranian accounts are the reverse. They come from an institution manufacturing a public presence for a leadership that can no longer appear in person,” he said.
As ordinary Iranian citizens continue to face strict internet restrictions at home, Tehran’s elite enjoy open access to foreign platforms to target Western audiences.
Tehran has deployed a new front on Western social media, including an influence campaign to sway Americans and undermine President Donald Trump’s push for a deal, analysts warn. (Hamed Malekpour / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)
Alp Toker, of internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, told News Agency that the regime had “learned” asymmetric information warfare.
“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,” he 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.
“It’s a double-edged sword — you get more open politics at the cost of regime propagandization.
“Iranian authorities, among others, are getting better at gaming this system,” Toker added.
Mohammed said the parallel systems — a heavily censored internet at home and what he described as an “open megaphone” aimed at Western audiences — provide the strongest evidence the campaign is an external influence operation rather than organic domestic speech.
