For decades, Iran’s clerical dictatorship has treated propaganda as an instrument of state power. Newspapers, television, mosques, cultural centers, intelligence agencies, and diplomatic missions have all played their part in spreading the regime’s message and demonizing its enemies. Now the mullahs have acquired a powerful new weapon. Artificial intelligence.

A disturbing investigation published by Anthropic has exposed three Iranian state-aligned influence operations using its Claude artificial intelligence system to construct sophisticated propaganda campaigns. These were no collection of enthusiastic amateurs posting slogans from Tehran. Anthropic says the operations were linked to Iranian state propaganda institutions and formed part of what their organizers themselves described as a “soft war” and “cognitive warfare” program.

The implications are chilling. According to Anthropic, Claude became what amounted to an administrative and operational headquarters. It helped create campaign plans, operational manuals, artificial personas, target databases, amplification schedules, and ministerial planning documents. Government intelligence bulletins could be transformed rapidly into material in Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Malay, Spanish, and English, with ambitions extending to 20 languages. Even more sinister was the deliberate laundering of attribution. State propaganda could be rewritten to appear as the work of foreign journalists, independent commentators, or ordinary citizens. Artificial personas could manufacture the illusion of spontaneous public opinion. This represents industrialized deception.

The objective is familiar to anyone who has studied the Islamic Republic. Tehran has always understood that propaganda becomes more effective when the audience cannot see who is pulling the strings.........

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