{"id":329808,"date":"2025-03-25T15:23:47","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=329808"},"modified":"2025-09-20T15:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T14:53:08","slug":"the-regimes-pen-how-irans-clerical-dictatorship-uses-friendly-journalists-as-propaganda-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/the-regimes-pen-how-irans-clerical-dictatorship-uses-friendly-journalists-as-propaganda-assets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Regime\u2019s Pen: How Iran\u2019s Clerical Dictatorship Uses Friendly Journalists as Propaganda Assets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AI-generated
AI-generated image of an Iranian mullah pulling the strings of a Western journalist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It began with a strange email.<\/p>\n

In 2015, veteran national security reporter Shane Harris opened his inbox to find an invitation\u2014an all-expenses-paid trip to Tehran, a \u201cscientific and creative\u201d conference on the theme of terrorism. The sponsors? A group called the \u201cInternational Congress on 17,000 Iranian Terror Victims,\u201d whose website was adorned with themes like \u201cZionist State Terrorism,\u201d \u201cCyber War,\u201d and \u201cEconomic Terrorism.\u201d But beneath the awkward grammar and conspiratorial flair, Harris spotted something serious: among the sponsors were the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), and the keynote at the previous year\u2019s event had been delivered by the head of Iranian intelligence himself.<\/p>\n

The message was clear: the clerical regime in Tehran wasn\u2019t just inviting Harris to speak\u2014it was trying to recruit him, to enlist a credible Western journalist into its propaganda machine. He declined<\/a>, but the episode opened a window into one of the regime\u2019s most underappreciated tactics: the quiet co-opting and coercion of journalists, both foreign and domestic, in its war of narratives.<\/p>\n

And at the center of that war? The regime\u2019s obsessive campaign to discredit, isolate, and ultimately neutralize its most potent existential threat: the pro-democracy Iranian Resistance, led by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its main component, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ministry\u2019s Invisible Ink<\/h3>\n

Ali Fallahian, a former Iranian intelligence minister and one of the masterminds of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina, once admitted<\/a> it openly on regime television: \u201cWe don\u2019t send agents abroad with a badge. Obviously, they need cover\u2014businessmen, academics, reporters. Many of our reporters are actually ministry agents.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

and here is the role reporters like @hommer_ich<\/a> @schwerin_von<\/a> play for Iran straight from the mouth of Iran's former intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian#Spiegel_FakeNews<\/a> #Spiegel<\/a> #FakeNews<\/a> serving the Mullahs pic.twitter.com\/nSTS6RS86i<\/a><\/p>\n

— Zolal Habibi \uea00 (@Ashrafi4ever) February 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n