An Al Jazeera investigation uncovers how a coordinated campaign involving Israeli officials and suspicious accounts are hijacking the #FreeThePersianPeople hashtag, a report by the Qatari network said on its English website said.
In recent weeks as protests erupted in Iranian cities, the hashtag #FreeThePersianPeople trended on X. The campaign was accompanied by a flood of posts heralding an imminent “decisive moment” in Iran’s history and presenting themselves as the authentic voice of the Iranian people, the Al-Jazeera report said.
However, an extensive data analysis by Al Jazeera reveals a different picture.
Data from 'Tweet Binder' reveals that most of the posts lack organic engagement, the report added.
Tracking the sources of this interaction and its dissemination paths uncovers that the digital campaign did not originate organically from within Iran.
Instead, it was spearheaded by external networks – primarily accounts linked to Israel or pro-Israel circles – that played a central role in manufacturing momentum and steering the discourse toward specific geopolitical goals.
The data associated with the campaign reveals a striking anomaly in how the hashtag spread, indicative of artificial amplification.
Al Jazeera’s analysis found that 94 percent of the 4,370 posts analysed were retweets compared with a negligible percentage of original content.
More significantly, the number of accounts producing original content did not exceed 170 users, yet the campaign reached more than 18 million users.
This massive gap between the limited number of sources and the vast reach is a hallmark of coordinated influence operations, often referred to as “astroturfing”, in which pre-packaged messages are amplified to create the illusion of widespread public consensus.
The report added that a review of the content shows the hashtag was not merely an expression of social or economic grievances. Instead, it carried a rigid political framework designed to reframe and actually pour on the unrest.
The discourse portrayed developments inside Iran as a “moment of collapse” and relied on sharp binaries: “The People vs. The Regime”, “Freedom vs. Political Islam” and “Iran vs. The Islamic Republic”.
The campaign heavily promoted Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, as the sole political alternative. Pahlavi himself engaged with the campaign, a move that was immediately amplified by Israeli accounts describing him as the “face of the alternative Iran”. But he is not thought of in those terms by a majority of Iranians, many of whom have memories of his father’s abuses and how the CIA restored him to power in 1953 in a United States-United Kingdom-orchestrated coup.
Posts describing the Iranian government as an “oppressive Islamist regime” circulated alongside narratives portraying the “Persian people” as victims of Islam. This attempt to distinguish between “Persians” and “Muslims” appeared aimed at isolating the regime from Iranian society and framing the unrest as a civilizational clash.
The discourse quickly evolved from solidarity to explicit calls for foreign military intervention. And this narrative was pushed by US President Donald Trump, who bombed Iran’s nuclear sites as part of Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June.
The network amplified statements attributed to Trump regarding Washington’s readiness to intervene. Pahlavi publicly welcomed these statements, framing them as support for “change”.
Simultaneously, members of the US Congress, including Representative Pat Fallon, a member of Trump’s Republican Party, further amplified these sentiments while dozens of accounts within the network directed tweets at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging direct Israeli intervention.
MNA