“projecting” by the Most Important Intelligence-Security Institutions of the Islamic Republic in a Joint Press Statement

On Friday, October 28, 2022, the “Ministry of Intelligence” and the “Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”, the most important intelligence-security institutions of the Islamic Republic, issued a joint press statement regarding the protests after the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini. In this statement, these two institutions, like in the past, started projecting, among other things, to foreign countries, including the United States, Britain, and Israel, and in general, the “enemies” as the main cause and instigation of the recent protests through what they called “creating fake demands in cultural and social spheres.”
According to the aforementioned statement, the intelligence-security institutions of foreign countries have devised a scheme for the recent protests under the cover of “human rights” and “democracy promotion” through networking among the opponents of the Islamic Republic. These opponents have taken advantage of the “the existing issues and people’s dissatisfaction.” In another part of this statement, it is stated that “It has been established that foreign intelligence services have laid the groundwork for the recent riots through a plot that is to be carried out by their agents and their networks inside the country.”
The Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC Intelligence Agency called the concerns about filtering and international measures aimed at providing free access to the Internet in Iran “fake” and characterized the move to make Starlink satellite Internet available to the Iranian people as an “expansion of the American Internet dictatorship” and claimed that the Starlink equipment or parts entered Iran illegally.
The two intelligence bodies also criticized Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and claimed that the company “paved the way for fake news, hate speech, and acts of violence by deliberately manipulating artificial intelligence algorithms.” The statement added that this was done with great intensity and in a targeted fashion.
The most important security-intelligence institutions of the Islamic Republic have characterized the two arrested Iranian female journalists who actively covered the news of Mahsa Amini’s death “as trained under the supervision of the American mafia-like regime with a history of meddling in foreign countries”.
This statement accused Nilufar Hamedi, reporter of Shargh newspaper, and Elahe Mohammadi, reporter of HamMihan newspaper, of slanted and biased reporting even though these two reporters’ managing editors (Mehdi Rahmanian, the editor-in-chief of Sharq newspaper and Gholamhossein Karbaschi, editor-in-chief of Ham-Mihan newspaper) came to their defense. In this regard, Rahmanian said: “Publishing photos of Mahsa and news of her death by our reporter was the right thing to do and we have fulfilled our mission as journalists. Ms. Hamedi was in lockstep with us all along the way.” Karbaschi also stressed that Elahe Mohammadi, the reporter of this newspaper, went to Kurdistan with the full knowledge of this newspaper to cover Mahsa Amini’s funeral.”