In early 2023, Reza Pahlavi made his first official visit to Israel. He’s the son of the last shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and was replaced by the ayatollah regime.

The visit by the Iranian crown prince, a title mentioned by his Israeli host, then-Intelligence Minister (and current Science Minister) Gila Gamliel, was covered by the Israeli media, including Haaretz’s reporting. Reporters echoed the official line: The visit was proof that there is no animosity between the Israeli and Iranian peoples, but only between the Israeli government and the regime in Tehran.

While Pahlavi enjoys some popularity among the Iranian expat community, it’s far from clear that Iranians want him as a leader. The son of a former dictator who enjoyed Israeli and American patronage, he carries the political baggage of his father, whose rule was known not only for its openness to Western culture but also for corruption, political repression and the torture of regime opponents.

Unlike his father, Reza carries messages of peace, democracy and human rights. When asked at a press conference alongside Gamliel how the Iranian people would shake off the ayatollahs’ rule, he repeated in fluent English the message he has been delivering for decades.

Then he paused, raised a finger and qualified his statement. “But the key element is that none of these movements could have succeeded without some element of international support,” he said, justifying his visit to Israel.

When asked about the responses he was getting to his visit to Israel, Iran’s archenemy, he said reactions had been largely positive. He also referred reporters to his social media accounts.

“Don’t take my word for it, search on social media … on Twitter, Instagram, any platform,” he said. “If you do the research yourself, you don’t need to ask me the question. The answer is right before your eyes.”

Pahlavi’s answer is particularly noteworthy in light of the findings by Haaretz and TheMarker, Haaretz’s business newspaper. It turns out that a large-scale digital influence campaign in Persian was underway, operated out of Israel and funded by a private entity that receives government support.

The campaign promotes Pahlavi’s public image and amplifies calls for restoring the monarchy. The campaign relies on “avatars,” fake online personas posing as Iranian citizens on social media. They were first discovered by social media researchers in Israel and abroad

According to the sources who spoke with TheMarker and Haaretz, since the outbreak of the war in Gaza and after Pahlavi’s visit, an online operation began operating as part of an even broader Israeli campaign to influence the social media discourse, which also includes campaigns in English and German.

According to five sources with direct knowledge of the project, native Persian speakers were recruited for the operation. Three of the sources confirmed the connection between the project and this specific campaign, and said they witnessed the network advancing pro-Pahlavi messaging.

According to the sources, the campaign included fake accounts on platforms such as X and Instagram and used artificial intelligence tools to help disseminate key narratives, craft its messages and generate content. According to two of the sources, there were also efforts to amplify the posts of Pahlavi’s ally in Israel, Gamliel, a minister from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Given that the operation was indirectly funded by taxpayer money and designed to serve Israel’s geopolitical interests, some of the people involved were uncomfortable with the pressure to use the campaign to promote the minister, two sources said.

Parts of this network and its accounts were already exposed by Haaretz. Sources linked the campaign to the network of pro-Pahlavi accounts first detected by independent social media researchers Nitsan Yasur and Gil Feldman, and first reported by Haaretz’s Bar Peleg. At the time, the effort was described as an apparent foreign-influence operation. The target audience was unclear due to posts that seemed to promote the minister.

But the sources stressed that the campaign only looked foreign – its origins were in Israel. According to the investigation by TheMarker and Haaretz, the operation involved the commissioning of services from external suppliers, private actors free to sell their services to clients beyond the Israeli state.

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2025-10-03/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-israeli-influence-operation-in-iran-pushing-to-reinstate-the-shah-monarchy/00000199-9f12-df33-a5dd-9f770d7a0000