A document published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center states that Iranian authorities have operated coordinated propaganda networks over three decades with the stated aim of fuelling antisemitism and deepening social divisions in Western countries. The document's findings note that, aware of the disparity in conventional military power, Iran has opted for indirect methods — deploying what the report describes as tools of cultural and informational influence directed at Western targets.
According to the report, Iran has worked to position antisemitism as a unifying thread across ideologically diverse fringe movements, while also cultivating an international network through gatherings that have drawn attendees from groups such as Codepink, the Nation of Islam, and individuals who deny the Holocaust.
According to the document, those who attended the conference later contributed work to outlets linked to the Iranian government, including appearances on Press TV — a television broadcaster operating under state authority in Iran — and participation in various platforms described as "alternative media," through which content aligned with official government positions was produced and circulated. Separately, Khaykin told a news channel that Iran had developed a media network aimed at disseminating particular viewpoints, narratives, and conspiracy theories by combining state-run broadcasters such as Press TV, which he characterised as operating under government direction, with a wider constellation of non-mainstream platforms designed to project an appearance of independent journalism — among them MintPress News, an outlet that identifies itself as a progressive, anti-Zionist publication and whose editorial output has been characterised as reflecting positions consistent with those of the Iranian government.
The document, according to Khaykin's remarks to a news outlet, details how Iranian state-sponsored messaging has promoted the allegation that Israeli personnel train American law enforcement in methods used against Black communities — a claim that gatherings such as a Tehran conference titled "On the Brink," focused on policing practices and race in the United States, have worked to embed within international discourse, with the event drawing attendance from various Black activists and others holding views described as outside the political mainstream.
Attendees were reportedly exposed to presentations carrying titles such as "Israel: The Harvard University of Police Brutality," which, according to the speaker, planted the notion that Israeli or Jewish actors bore responsibility for racially discriminatory policing practices in the United States. Upon returning home, participants then spread that framing through their social, political, cultural, and religious networks, and in 2017 the organization Jewish Voice for Peace took up the narrative, lending it, in the speaker's characterisation, a degree of perceived Jewish credibility.
Khaykin described the underlying mechanics of such narratives — which had by then evolved to include claims that the Israel Defense Forces trained U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel in the mistreatment of migrants and communities of color — as deliberately engineered to spread beyond their origins, functioning as self-reinforcing propaganda that converts those it targets into unwitting carriers of the message, ultimately producing committed adherents who continue circulating it without outside direction.
Khaykin described Iran's approach to influence operations as mirroring a method long associated with Soviet-era practice — identifying pre-existing social fault lines, political tensions, and contested public debates, then amplifying them as a tool for deepening societal division — adding that Tehran and Moscow continue to pursue such activities in coordination.
According to the report, Iranian authorities have built a network of social media influencers to circulate state-aligned messaging and have also run coordinated editing operations on Wikipedia, exploiting the platform's open contribution system to embed that content within its pages.
Khaykin has stated that the influence operations attributed to Iran carry tangible effects in the physical world. The perpetrator of the May 2022 supermarket attack in Buffalo, N.Y. — in which multiple people were killed — stated that content published by MintPress News had been among the material shaping his thinking prior to the shooting.
Khaykin, speaking to a television news outlet, urged lawmakers to revisit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — a provision that broadly protects social media platforms from legal liability over content posted by users — contending that the statute leaves those companies with insufficient accountability and that platforms need to take a harder look at how their services are being put to harmful use.
