A US-based researcher has censured the verified mobilization of 1,653 fake accounts promoting Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former US-backed monarch, to promote Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral campaign as part of a broader pattern of “coordinated political manipulation.”

“This is definitely not organic or spontaneous Iranian public opinion. It’s coordinated, inauthentic political manipulation masquerading as grassroots support,” Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for International Policy and a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), wrote on X on Monday.

Toossi argued that such operations were not new, but had been pursued for years, particularly since 2022, as the Israeli regime intensified its “regime-change efforts” targeting Iran.

From promoting Pahlavi to campaigning for Netanyahu

His remarks followed an investigation by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which found that a network of 1,653 X accounts previously identified as promoting Reza Pahlavi had mobilized to encourage voting in favor of Netanyahu and his Likud party ahead of the recent election.

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According to Ha’aretz, the accounts posed as Iranians living inside Iran or abroad and published Hebrew-language messages urging support for Netanyahu “on behalf of the Iranian people.”

The investigation, based on research by social media monitoring company Expose, found that approximately 1,600 of the accounts had previously been identified as part of an influence operation promoting Pahlavi.

As the election campaign gathered momentum in July, 185 accounts began interacting with Netanyahu’s social media profiles, including by sharing posts attacking his political opponents. Following the election, the network returned to promoting Pahlavi, the paper wrote.

Ha’aretz documented coordinated activity, particularly on election day. Two accounts shared 109 identical posts, compared with just four expected through organic activity, and responded simultaneously or within five minutes of each other to 232 posts by 53 different accounts.

Messages included, “Tomorrow, vote only for the Likud party” and “vote for Benjamin Netanyahu.” Another post tied Netanyahu’s potential victory to “protection” against Iran and the regional Axis of Resistance.

Previous investigations into influence operations

Toossi also cited an October 2025 investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which uncovered a separate network of fake accounts disseminating AI-generated content to encourage rioting in Iran following unprovoked American-Israeli aggression targeting the country last June.

Citizen Lab assessed that the operation was most likely conducted by an Israeli regime agency or a contractor working closely with it.