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KINSELLA: Our side is losing the information war

The debate about who has prevailed in the military conflict will go on, probably for years.

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Who is winning the war?

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Israel is not losing. Every day that Iran’s military infrastructure is degraded or destroyed is a good day for Israel.

KINSELLA: Our side is losing the information war Back to video

The United States does not seem to be winning. Donald Trump has failed to meet the objectives he set for the war: Iran’s hardline Islamist dictators, and the fascistic Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are still in charge. The regime hasn’t lost the capacity to make nuclear weapons. And the long-suffering Iranian people continue to suffer.

It is not helpful, meanwhile, that Trump continues to vacillate between threats to bomb Iran “into the stone age” and kill “a whole civilization” – and then say, sometimes in the same news cycle, that “great progress” is being made in “active” peace talks.

In the midst of all that, people who aren’t perpetual Never Trumpers are suggesting the U.S. is losing the war. Maj.-Gen. (Ret’d) David Fraser, who led NATO forces in Afghanistan: “The U.S. underestimated Iran.” The influential Council on Foreign Relations: “Iran wins if it does not lose; the United States loses if it does not win.” The Economist, on its cover: “Advantage, Iran.”

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Iran dominating information war

The debate about who has prevailed in the military conflict will go on, probably for years. But on another critical front – the information war – there can be no doubt: Iran is dominating.

Cyabra is an Israeli-based firm that shields companies and governments from online disinformation, bots and harmful Artificial Intelligence campaigns. As I write in my new book The Hidden Hand, Cyabra was the very first to show that Hamas was running a massive and organized propaganda campaign against Jews, the Jewish state and Western democracy – a disinformation campaign that started on the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas and ordinary Gazans killed, maimed and raped thousands of Israelis.

A few days ago, Cyabra released a detailed analysis of the propaganda war that Iran has unleashed in the past few weeks. Its conclusion: Iran has overseen “a large-scale, coordinated disinformation operation designed to manipulate the global narrative surrounding [the war].”

• Iran has deployed tens of thousands of fake accounts to spread AI-generated videos across social media, crafted to manipulate perceptions of the war, and generating over 145 million views

• The campaign has pushed one clear agenda: portraying Iran as the dominant and victorious power

• The fake profiles show clear signs of coordinated activity coming out of a centralized source, including identical keywords and hashtags, synchronized posting patterns, and repeated content distribution

• The campaign mirrors the patterns seen on and after October 7 – and in previous Iranian disinformation operations, which have gone on since the beginning of the Internet

Disinformation active on social media

The main platform for Iranian-backed disinformation is TikTok, the social media platform overwhelmingly favoured by young people. TikTok has devolved into a playground for Iranian AI-generated deepfakes and fabricated footage, Cyabra noted, because of its reliance on videos and algorithmic amplification. So, in the U.S., 64% of young adults oppose the war – and in Canada, one in five Gen Z adults actually support the Iranian regime over the West.

The Iranian disinformation is active on X, Facebook and Instagram, too. Their success on social media has been ”extraordinary,” Cyabra reported. Just over 37,000 fake profiles have generated nearly ten million engagements online – and an astounding 145 million views.

The key Iranian narrative, Cyabra found, is that Iran is the dominant power in the conflict – with this antisemitic hashtag used over and over: “Israel Terror State.” Other narratives successfully pushed by Iran were that the Islamist dictatorship is a military and technological superpower – and that Iran has successfully deceived the U.S. into bombing decoy targets.

Other narratives include “entirely fabricated scenarios,” Cyabra found: fake videos of Israeli cities, ports and military sites being bombed – along with U.S. aircraft carriers and military equipment. Just one fake video, showing a missile striking Dubai, was seen nearly three million times.

As on October 7, the fake accounts had been dormant for many months, posting little. They suddenly became active when war broke out. Just one account, active on both Facebook and TikTok, claimed to be in Los Angeles – but was really based in Iran. Its 44 disinformation posts achieved an astounding 3.3 million views.

Another fake profile, “IranWar49,” has amassed millions of views with dramatic visuals, Cyabra found, “depicting large-scale bomb detonations, underground military bases, and weapons of mass destruction.” Just one of IranWar49’s now-deleted posts, showing a missile attack that never happened, got seven million views.

Concludes Cyabra: “By deploying tens of thousands of fake accounts and distributing AI-generated videos across social media, the campaign succeeded in pushing pro-Iran narratives to massive audiences, generating over 145 million views. At the center of the operation was a clear propaganda objective: portray Iran as the dominant and victorious power in the war while framing its adversaries as weak, deceived, or ineffective.”

As I write in The Hidden Hand: most of the anti-Israel, anti-West content now seen across social media is slick, effective and state-generated. The main offender is Iran, aided and abetted by its allies in China and Russia.

And, in that information war, our side is losing.

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