Active Measures
Unlike classic espionage, which targets agents to obtain secrets, active measures involve influence operations, forgeries, front groups, friendship associations, and propaganda. The Guards engage in these measures as a form of political warfare. Propaganda is disseminated through television, film, newspapers, posters, murals, political actions, rallies, protests, and other activities.
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the new regime established the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). The IRIB, or Sazman-e Seda va Sima-ye Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran, is the primary government agency responsible for television. Section 175 of the Iranian Constitution prohibits the establishment of private broadcasting networks and states that “freedom of expression and publication of ideas by the IRIB must be in line with Islamic laws and national interests.” Most television shows are informational, often propaganda, or light entertainment. In 2015, Khamenei lauded the IRIB as a critical weapon in “countering the soft war” waged by the West. Meanwhile, the United States has imposed sanctions on IRIB, alleging that the state-run broadcaster was blocking foreign channels the government deemed objectionable.
Information operations are common in war. During World War II, Germany used radio broadcasts to lower enemy morale. Stations aired Western popular music and propaganda to reach British and American soldiers. The Soviets, too, targeted American audiences, and many European and American writers, artists, and intellectuals were supporters of or sympathetic to the world’s first communist state. Some produced glowing accounts of Stalin. By the mid-1930s, Los Angeles housed one of the country’s strongest communist organizations, and some party members flourished in Hollywood, keeping negative depictions of Soviet life out of scripts.
Like the Soviet and Nazi services before them, the Guards use active measures to deceive and influence Western leaders about the country’s political reality and direction. Iran and its Revolutionary Guard faced an image problem after the 1979 Revolution. Mass arrests; street scuffles; the forced draping of women; and the wholesale, often public, shooting of dissidents and reformers sullied the country’s image. There was also sulfurous rhetoric pouring from political halls and mosques. Recognizing the negative effects of these images, the Guards try to scrub Iran’s image and divert attention from Khomeini’s global agenda. The Nazi and Soviet regimes, as well as today’s Iranian leaders, pledged their determination to avoid war. In the mid- and late 1930s, Germany appealed to Britain and France to maintain continental peace and avoid senseless war.
The Soviets anchored their information operations in the concept of world peace. Iranian rhetorical themes include Iran’s victimization, the need to preserve peace, U.S. aggression, and the illegitimacy of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes, Iranian news outlets and leaders tap into Western themes. Khamenei leveraged the American women’s “#MeToo” campaign against sexual harassment, tweeting that the movement exposes “the disaster of countless sexual assaults on Western women.”
Other themes reflect Western anxieties about climate change. For example, in 2018, the head of a civil defense organization claimed that Israeli scientists had made Iranian clouds barren of rain. The Guards produce films warning Iranians of internal threats from dual nationals. In one film, the narrator says, “The Islamic Republic has been more harmed by dual nationals than anyone else.” While other Iranian broadcasts do not propagate falsehoods, they routinely depict the West negatively.
Since the 1980s, Iranian services have promoted propaganda, particularly among Shia communities worldwide, by subsidizing mosques and friendship associations. For example, the Kuwaiti-Iranian Friendship Association, in its own words, aims to expand economic, cultural, and social relations. In 1998, Iran established a friendship association in China. Iran sometimes taps into the traditional friendship it has enjoyed with other countries, particularly those with significant trade, such as Germany. As of late 2018, 120 German companies operated in Iran, and 10,000 German businesses traded with Iran.
Agents of Influence
An agent of influence uses their position to shape public opinion on issues important to the country that controls them. The KGB placed great emphasis on developing agents of influence. Soviet and Soviet Bloc intelligence agencies were proficient at spotting talent and cultivating contacts with promising actors, journalists, and intellectuals who would represent the Soviet view. One example was the scholarship awarded to the young actress Frances Farmer, whose high school essay, “God Dies,” earned her a trip to the Moscow Art Theatre. Other famous agents of influence included the journalist Walter Duranty and U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss.
In prewar Nazi Germany, the German American Bund used active measures to build influence. The organization was formed in 1936 as “an organization of patriotic Americans of German stock” and grew to include thousands of members. Most Bund members were immigrants who arrived in America after World War I. Some leading Britons, including Oswald Mosley and William Joyce, promoted National Socialism. Western intellectuals such as Paul de Man, Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, and the poet Ezra Pound were openly pro-Nazi.
As part of its diplomatic efforts, revolutionary Iran has long sought to court Western intellectuals to promote a positive image of the country. One prominent figure was Roger Garaudy. A former communist, French resistance fighter, and convert to Islam, Garaudy loved Iran and Khomeini, whom he praised for “struggling against arrogant powers’ violence and forming a united world.” He visited Iran several times in the 1990s and was received by then-President Mohammed Khatami.
Basiji Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, as reported by Fars, state-run media, eulogized Garaudy as “a brave writer and revolutionary politician.” When he died at ninety-nine in 2012, the Basij issued condolences to his family. Iranian leaders ensured his legacy would not be forgotten: Hezbollah honored outstanding students in a ceremony named after him.
Iran holds international conferences that invite like-minded thinkers to speak. Iran’s Second International “New Horizons” Conference in 2014 drew a mix of Western Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, Israel boycott promoters, and antiwar activists. Hassan Abbasi, the Guards’ “Kissinger of Iran,” assists in planning the conferences.
According to organizers, the event included “elite thinkers, philosophers, activists, and politicians worldwide” who discussed Zionist control of the film industry and the influence of the “Zionist lobby in America.” Among attendees were U.S. antiwar activists and critics of U.S. foreign policy. French satirist Dieudonne M’bala M’bala and U.S. Muslim activists also attended. Iran also invites U.S. professors with presumably sympathetic views to give interviews on Iranian television and at conferences; Iranian leaders regularly criticize perceived injustices in American society. For example, when a white police officer killed a handcuffed Black American in Minnesota in the summer of 2020, Foreign Minister Zarif wrote on Twitter, “Some don’t think #Black-LivesMatter. . . . To those of us who do: it is long overdue for the entire world to wage war against racism. Time for a #WorldAgainstRacism.”””
