The Iranian Regime’s Misinformation Campaign

It is time for the West to counter the Iranian regime’s misinformation campaign. In a July 2017 interview with the state-run Apart TV, former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian revealed that the MOIS has long used the services of people in various fields including scholars or journalists to advance its agenda abroad, including its misinformation campaign. In an interview with a state-affiliated TV station, he boasted, “We don’t send an agent to Germany or America and for example say, ok, I am an agent of the intelligence ministry. … Obviously, he would work under the cover of business or other jobs including reporters. You know, many of our reporters are actually Ministry agents.”

On December 15, 2022, the Associated Press reported that an Albanian court had convicted an Iranian man on terrorism-related charges and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment, according to court officials. “In a ruling issued Wednesday but made public a day later, Albania’s Special Court on Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) found Bijan Pooladrag guilty of funding terrorism and being a member of a terrorist organization. No details on Pooladrag’s age, home city, or when he had come to Albania were made known,” the AP wrote, adding, “Pooladrag was arrested two years ago on suspicion of spying on members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, some 3,000 of whom live in exile in Albania.” The Albanian news outlet, News24 had written earlier, “Pooladrag is accused by SPAK of being part of a terrorist cell that intended to attack senior officials of the Iranian opposition, who live in Ashraf 3. He received orders and instructions through the Telegram application. And according to the investigations, the assassination of one of the senior members of the MEK was being planned.  O …