Outrage over ‘completely unacceptable’ scheme to smear critics
Negar Mortazavi, Borzou Daragahi, Independent, Jun 12 2019
Pindo State Dept boxtops say they are outraged by a government-funded troll campaign that has targeted Pindo citizens critical of the administration’s hardline Iran policy and accused critics of being loyal to the Tehran regime. State Dept boxtops admitted to Congressional staff in a closed-door meeting on Monday that a project they had funded to counter Iranian propaganda had gone off the rails. A senior Congressional aide told The Independent:
It’s completely unacceptable that taxpayer dollars supported a project that attacked Pindos and others who are critical of the Trump administration’s policy of escalation and conflict with Iran. This is something that happens in authoritarian regimes, not democracies.
One woman behind the harassment campaign, a long-time Pindo-Iranian activist, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the State Dept over the years to promote “freedom of expression and free access to information.” The campaign relentlessly attacked critics of the Iran policy on social media, including Twitter and Telegram messaging app, accusing them without evidence of being paid operatives of the regime in Tehran. A State Dept spox told reporters on Monday that funding for the “Iran Disinformation Project” had been suspended and is under review after it was reported that it went beyond the scope of its mandate by veering from countering propaganda from Iran to smearing domestic critics of White House policy. State Dept boxtops disclosed to Congressional staff they had granted $1.5m for Iran Disinfo, which repeatedly targeted, harassed and smeared critics of Trump’s tough stance against Iran on social media. Among those targeted were Pindo activists, scholars and journalists who challenged the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran. The revelation that taxpayer money was being used to attack administration critics has now sparked a flurry of queries. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter:
There are still so many unanswered questions here. What rules are in place to prevent state-funded organisation from smearing Pindo citizens? If there wasn’t public outcry, would the Administration have suspended funding for Iran Disinfo?
Congresswoman Barbara Lee declared:
The State Dept has been giving taxpayer money to operatives accused of intimidating and harassing Pindo human rights activists, journalists and academics who’ve criticized their hawkish policies on Iran. This is unacceptable and we will not stand for it.
State Dept boxtops speaking at the closed-door meeting admitted the project was out of bounds, according to Congressional staffers of both parties, who were highly critical of the project and questioned whether the State Dept should continue to work with the contractor, E-Collaborative for Civic Education. The State Dept spox declined to outline steps to prevent such an operation in the future. Iran Disinfo has even attacked journalists deemed insufficiently supportive of the Trump administration’s policies at Pindo-funded news outlets including VoA, Farda and RFE/RL. The harassment campaign is one aspect of an Iran policy that critics have warned was overly politicised, incoherent and risky. Trump 45 voided the JCPoA last year and launched an unprecedented campaign of sanctions and threats against Tehran, vowing to pressure the country into cutting a “better deal” than the one it forged with his predecessor, Obama 44. Seeking evidence that its policies were working and popular, the administration has relied an unconventional information sources, often citing obscure right-wing news outlets and think tanks. E-Collaborative for Civic Education, co-founded by Pindo-Iranian activist Mariam Memarsadeghi, is a long-time State Dept contractor. It purports to promote democratic political life and empower civil society inside Iran, but it appears to have no presence inside the country and instead confines itself to engaging with Iranians in the Diaspora. Congressional boxtops also confirmed to The Independent that one individual working for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies is part of the E-Collaborative for Civic Education’s Iran Disinformation Project. One Congressional staffer said:
I expect the State Dept will examine the extent of coordination between Iran Disinfo project and pro-war think tanks like the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.
Over the weekend, The Intercept revealed that a purported Iranian activist who had published dozens of articles on Iran in prominent outlets such as Forbes and The Hill does not exist and is a fake persona run by a team of operatives connected to the MeK. The “Heshmat Alavi” persona had a strong presence on Twitter and harassed Iranian journalists, academics, and activists who are critical of the MeK, a one-time armed guerilla group now holed up in Albania. There is no known link between the Iran Disinfo programme and the fake persona. At least one was cited by the Trump administration as proof against the effectiveness of the Obama-era nuclear deal. Some of the MeK articles were also picked up by Pindo government funded VoA’s Persian-language service. Both the Alavi account and the Pindo-funded account frequently accused Pindo-Iranians sceptical about the Trump administration of being dupes of Tehran. Dylan Williams of J Street told The Independent:
It’s an outrage that the Trump administration was funnelling taxpayer dollars to a smear campaign accusing Pindo citizens of dual loyalty to a foreign regime. Decent people wouldn’t tolerate such state-sponsored defamation if the target was Pindo-Jews and we shouldn’t when the target is Pindo-Iranians.
Trump administration cuts funding to anti-Iran group
Alessio Perrone, Independent, Jun 2 2019
The State Dept has suspended funding for an online project aimed at fighting Iranian disinformation after it appeared to troll human rights workers, academics and journalists. The funding suspension was announced on Friday after several people reported the account was targeting them for criticising or questioning the Trump administration’s stance on Iran. The Iran Disinformation Project was funded by the State Dept’s Global Engagement Centre, which was set up by Congress to counter online extremism and propaganda. But several people denounced the group’s activity on Twitter in recent weeks after it took to attacking those it deemed not critical enough of the regime, branding them as “mouthpieces” and supporters of the Iranian government. The identity of the person or group contracted to run the account or how much money it had received was not immediately clear. Pindo-Iranian commentator Negar Mortazavi, who was one of the targets and is a consultant editor for The Independent, published a long list of people criticised by the Twitter account @IranDisinfo. They included a researcher for HRW, a WaPo columnist, a BBC journalist and a professor at Georgetown University. The tweets have since been deleted. Ms Mortazavi said in a Twitter thread on May 30:
So the State Dept uses taxpayer money to fund online attacks on HRW because the organisation is researching the human cost of Pindo sanctions in Iran. They use State Dept money to attack and smear diaspora Iranian journalists, analysts, academics and activists, some living in exile.
The State Dept said that funding was cut because the group’s recent tweets had violated its guidelines for counter-propaganda projects, but that the bulk of its work conformed to those terms. However, Ms Mortazavi rebutted the response in a later tweet, adding a long list of attacks:
That is false. @IranDisinfo attacks are not new. They have been going on for months, almost since the launch of the account.
The State Dept’s Global Engagement Centre was created by Congress in 2016 amid Daesh’s rise to power in Syria and Iraq to counter its online extremism and propaganda. Its portfolio was later expanded to include fighting foreign government propaganda, particularly from Russia, after Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, in part through social media.
An Iranian Activist Wrote Dozens Of Articles For Right-Wing Outlets, But Is He A Real Person?
Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept, Jun 9 2019
In 2018, Pres Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and WaPo reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi. Rizzo and Kelly reported:
Iran’s current budget is funded largely through ‘oil, taxes, increasing bonds, eliminating cash handouts or subsidies’ for Iranians, according to an article by a Forbes contributor, Heshmat Alavi, sent to us by a White House official.
The White House had used Alavi’s article, itself partly drawn from Iranian sources, to justify its decision to terminate the agreement. There’s a problem, though. Heshmat Alavi appears not to exist. Alavi’s persona is a propaganda operation run by the MeK, two sources told The Intercept. Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MeK who said he had direct knowledge of the operation, said:
Heshmat Alavi is a persona run by a team of people from the political wing of the MeK. They write whatever they are directed by their commanders and use this name to place articles in the press. This is not and has never been a real person.
Heyrani said the fake persona has been managed by a team of MeK operatives in Albania, where the group has one of its bases, and is used to spread its message online. Heyrani’s account is echoed by Sara Zahiri, a Farsi-language researcher who focuses on the MeK. Zahiri, who has sources among Iranian government cyber-security boxtops, said that Alavi is known inside Iran to be a “group account” run by a team of MeK members and that Alavi himself does not exist. Alavi, whose contributor biography on the Forbes website identifies him as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights,” has published scores of articles on Iran over the past few years at Forbes, The Hill, the Daily Caller, the Federalist, Al-Arabiya English and other outlets. Alavi did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment by Twitter direct messages or at the Gmail address he used to correspond with news outlets. The articles published under Alavi’s name, as well as his social media presence, appear to have been a boon for the MeK. An opposition group deeply unpopular in Iran and known for its sophisticated propaganda, the MeK has over the past decade turned its attention to English-language audiences, especially in countries like Pindostan, Canada, and the UK, whose foreign policies are crucial nodes in the MeK’s central goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime. Alavi’s persona is said to be managed by a trio of MeK members. Heyrani, who at one time helped coordinate online operations for the group, named the individuals and a commander from MEK’s political wing who have been responsible for writing English-language articles and tweets under Heshmat Alavi’s name, and shared their photographs and names with The Intercept. Heyrani said:
They were my friends. We were close friends. We were working together.
Heyrani explained that the MeK leadership would not look kindly on the fluent English speakers who operate the persona writing under their own names. Rank and file members, he said, are discouraged from having prominent public profiles, a reflection of what many critics have said is the MeK’s cult-like operating principles. Heyrani said:
The leader of the organization doesn’t allow any person to use their real name, because the leader is the first man in the organization, and everything should be under their shadow.
The MeK conducts relentless online information campaigns, using an army of bots to flood online debates about Iran with the group’s perspective. One of the goals of the MeK team that manages the Hesmat Alavi account, Heyrani said, is to get articles under Alavi’s name published in the Pindo press. The Intercept’s requests for comment to the MeK’s political wing, along with interview requests to the alleged operators of Alavi’s persona, went unanswered. Another former MeK member now living in Canada, Reza Sadeghi, confirmed that the trio identified by Heyrani was involved with the group’s online information operations. Sadeghi was a member of the MeK until 2008, involved in lobbying activities in the United States, as well as operations at the MeK’s former base at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. He described a growing online propaganda center run by the group, intended to sway online discourse about Iran. Sadeghi said:
We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran. At Camp Ashraf, there were computers set up to do online information operations. Over the years, this activity got more intense with the introduction of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
The MeK is among the most controversial groups seeking to depose the Iranian government. Although today it is mainly involved in political activism and lobbying, the group also has a history of violence. From 1997 until 2012, the MeK was listed as a terrorist organization by the State Dept, a status that was finally revoked as part of a diplomatic deal struck by the Obama administration. The group’s last claimed violent attack was in 2001. The MeK initially sided with the Islamic Revolution but fell out of favor shortly after the establishment of the clerical-led Islamic Republic. The subsequent crackdown forced the group into exile, operating between France and Iraq, where thanks to Saddam Hussein’s largesse the group occupied Camp Ashraf, used as a staging ground for its participation on Iraq’s side of the Iran-Iraq War. The years following Pindostan’s invasion of Iraq were harrowing for the MeK, complicated by the terrorist listing. As the Pindos withdrew their military forces, they handed over security at the MeK’s Iraqi base to the Iraqi government. Another round of violent crackdowns ensued. The 2012 deal to remove the MeK from the terror list facilitated the movement of thousands of MeK members from Iraq to Albania, where the group were housed in a new secretive compound. It is from this base in Albania where, according to the MeK defector Heyrani, some of the MEK members managing the Alavi persona are working.
Alavi’s author page for Forbes. (Screenshot: Intercept)
Alavi’s Articles Tend To mix scathing denunciations of the Iranian government with not-so-subtle suggestions that it might be replaced by the MEK and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. The group seems to have had great success with Alavi, particularly at Forbes. The Intercept reached out to editors at the outlets that Alavi has published articles with over the past several years. None of these outlets were able to confirm that they ever spoke with or met Alavi. He was not paid for his writing at Forbes, the Daily Caller or the Diplomat, according to spoxes for those publications. Although Alavi has published articles about Iran in a number of predominantly right-leaning publications, by far the most frequent publisher of his articles is Forbes. In a span of a year, between Apr 2017 and Apr 2018, Alavi published a staggering 61 articles for the Forbes website. A Twitter account created under Alavi’s name in 2014 boasts over 30,000 followers, including a number of journalists and DC-based conservative think tank employees. The account frequently shares articles and hashtags praising Rajavi and shares footage of protests and events held by the MeK.
Alavi seems to have gained some purchase in right-wing circles in Faschingstein. In addition to his many articles published by Forbes and other sites, Alavi also appears to run a blog called “Iran Commentary,” which describes its mission as focusing on “issues related to Iran and the Middle East.” One of its reports was recently cited as a source in an article from the Faschingstein Free Beacon, a neocon site that takes an ultra-hawkish view on Iran. The body of work published under Alavi’s name takes a consistently hawkish line toward the Iranian government and Pres Rouhani. Alavi’s articles also mixed criticisms of Iran and Pindo policy with overt advocacy for the MeK. His pieces in the Daily Caller, The Hill and other outlets, though less numerous than his contributions to Forbes, employed a similar mix of advocacy against the Iranian regime and praise for the MeK. Though the MeK is known to be widely loathed among Iranians, Alavi described the group as the “main Iranian opposition group” in a 2017 Daily CallerThe Diplomat, a foreign policy website that published a handful of Alavi’s pieces in 2017, said that Alavi sent drafts from a Gmail account. Alavi pitched the outlet dozens of articles, though only a small number were accepted. The Diplomat stopped accepting pitches from Alavi after determining that his articles were not meeting publication standards, it said. The Daily Caller also told The Intercept that the outlet stopped publishing Alavi’s articles over concerns about the quality of his submissions. The Hill, al-Arabiya English and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment. a Forbes spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept:
We terminated our relationship with Heshmat Alvi in early 2018. For your background, all contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. If we discover a contributor has violated these terms, we investigate the case fully and end our relationship if appropriate.
The MeK uses a number of means to gain influence in Faschingstein. The group has paid prominent political figures to give speeches and press conferences, donated money to politicians, and disseminated its messages through these interlocutors’ appearances in media, as well as its own robust social media presence. In 2018, its social media operations were the subject of an Al Jazeera “Listening Post” documentary. The group has used these PR efforts to pursue its policy goals. Up until 2012, the MeK was mostly focused on getting itself off the terror list. In the years that followed, the group focused on attacking nuclear diplomacy between Iran and Pindostan and after 2015, attacking the deal itself. Throughout, the MeK’s messaging has emphasized regime change, and attempted to present the MeK as a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic’s leadership, offering Rajavi, who has been the group’s public face for a decade and a half, as a potential figure to lead the country. Alavi’s articles often track closely with these objectives. In his stories, Alavi has included positive references to Rajavi, as well as the MEK’s political wing, the NCRI. In an article in Forbes effectively calling for international support for regime change in Iran, Alavi wrote:
The time has come to set aside the “reformist” mirage in Iran. For decades Maryam Rajavi as President of the NCRI is providing the sole realistic alternative for Iran with a ten-point plan that enjoys the support of thousands of elected officials across the globe.
Like his focus on the MEK’s goal of elevating Rajavi, Alavi’s messaging has also lined up with the group’s efforts to attack the Iran nuclear deal. During the period between 2017 and 2018, when Alavi’s articles appeared in Forbes, the Trump administration was taking steps to extricate Pindostan from the deal, despite objections from Euro vassals and former Obama admin boxtops. Alavi’s articles egged the administration on with items such as “Iran Feeling The Heat From Trump On Nuclear Deal” and “How Trump Can Correctly Approach Iran’s Nuclear Deal.” In May 2018, Trump announced that Pindostan would be withdrawing from the agreement, one month after Alavi’s last article was published in Forbes. The Alavi article that the White House offered to the WaPo in 2018 to justify withdrawing from the nuclear deal cited semi-official Iranian government sources to demonstrate increased military spending by Rouhani government. It concluded with a rhetorical flourish typical of Alavi’s articles, praising the Trump administration for ending “appeasement” policies toward Iran and chastising Europe for “standing alongside the murderous mullahs’ regime against the will of the Iranian people.” Alavi’s tack, exerting pressure on political discourse in Pindostan rather than in Iran itself, appears to be part of the MeK’s strategy. Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of the MeK’s intelligence department who left the group in 1996, said:
The group barely produces content in Farsi. They seem to have given up on having a domestic audience in Iran. Their point now is to influence people in the English-speaking world. Their online strategy works in Washington; it doesn’t work in Tehran.
Alongside its social media strategy and periodic articles, the MeK involves itself in higher-stakes information campaigns. In 2002, the MeK helped reveal the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. But according to arms control experts, the MeK got crucial details wrong. A 2006 article in the New Yorker also suggested that the intelligence may have been handed to the group by Israeli intelligence, calling into question the MeK’s claims that it operates a potent espionage network inside Iran. In other instances, the MeK’s information has been less than reliable, causing skepticism among many Western national security analysts. During a 2015 press conference, MeK boxtops claimed to have evidence of a secret nuclear facility under construction in Iran, complete with clandestine photographs of the site. This claim was partly debunked by a blogger from the Daily Kos. A reverse image search of a picture of the purported door to the nuclear site revealed that it had actually been taken from a commercial website in Iran that advertised safe boxes.
The MeK has had the most success influencing the debate over Iran policy online through its aggressive social media presence. Any remarks about the group or even Iranian politics in general can be expected to be met by scores of MeK supporters commenting through replies on Twitter and other social media. Many of the pro-MeK accounts will repeat the same messages, often word for word, swarming the mentions of any commentator. Geoff Golberg, founder of a social media mapping firm, took particular note of Alavi’s Twitter account, which appears to act as a node in an online campaign to boost the MEK’s profile. The account is heavily promoted by other pro-MEK accounts, as well as supporters of the group’s policy of confrontation toward Iran. To casual observers, these swarms of online activity can make it seem as though a large number of Iranians are enthusiastic about whatever it is that the MEK is promoting. Golberg said:
The Heshmat Alavi account is part of a group of accounts, which, for years, have engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior. “The account is connected to thousands of inauthentic MEK-focused accounts, many of which regularly engage with the account’s tweets. The goal of these efforts is to create the illusion of a larger support base than exists in reality.”
Alavi’s Twitter account. (Screenshot: Intercept)
Alavi has left few traces online, aside from his social media, his articles, and his emails to editors. One single photo, a heavily filtered side profile, is used for all of Alavi’s author profiles, his LinkedIn page and Twitter account. The photo’s origins are unclear. At a minimum, there are strong indications that the Alavi persona is not what it claims to be. To those unfamiliar with the internal politics of Iran, Alavi could come across in his writings as what he simply claimed to be: “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights.” The former MeK member Heyrani says that this framing is exactly what the group was hoping to create with the persona. To the extent that publications like Forbes were indifferent or amenable to Alavi’s message, it seems to have worked. Heyrani said:
The Mojahedin wants to show to the world that their narrative has support, even from people who are not directly members of the group. They want to show that other independent people, writers and activists, support their approach and believe that freedom and democracy will come to Iran through the work of this group.
Update: Jun 11 2019
Several hours after the publication of this article, the Heshmat Alavi account was suspended by Twitter. Shortly thereafter, an account bearing Alavi’s name on QuodVerum, an alternative social media site, published a post that said:
The Intercept’s article raises many lies against me & was heavily promoted by pro-Iran regime accounts on Twitter. I was not given a chance to reply.
In the weeks and months before publication, The Intercept sent several requests for comment to the Gmail address Alavi used to communicate with various editors at news outlets, and also sent direct messages to the Alavi account on Twitter. In the QuodVerum post, the Alavi account asked Twitter users to use Twitter to advocate for an end to his suspension from the platform. In a subsequent post on his blog, Iran Commentary, a user claiming to be Alavi again asked readers to use Twitter to push for his suspension to end. The author went on to concede that Alavi is not the user’s real name, nor do the profile photos employed by Alavi’s accounts belong to the user:
Firstly: No, I will never reveal my real identity or photograph. Not as long as the mullahs’ regime is in power. No activist in his/her right mind would do so. That would place all of my family, friends and myself, both inside & outside of Iran, in complete danger. Secondly: I will not reply to any emails or messages of any kind from The Intercept because their intentions are obvious as a biased, left-wing outlet. They don’t deserve my reply.
In the Iran Commentary post, Alavi explained his advocacy for the MEK:
Why do I support the MEK?
- They have an organization.
- They have an agenda.
- They are serious and dedicated.
Separately, the Forbes author page for Alavi appears to have been taken offline and The Diplomat, citing The Intercept’s investigation, retracted the five articles Alavi authored on the site, appending an editor’s note to the stories. the editor’s note said:
A Jun 2019 investigation revealed that this article was authored by a false persona. Accordingly, this article has been retracted in full for not meeting our standards on authorship disclosure. The Diplomat regrets this situation.
Niqnaq 