Though its capabilities remain more limited than those of Russia or China, Iran is becoming a significant authoritarian actor challenging democracy in the United States and Europe. Through information manipulation, malign finance, and cyberattacks, Tehran seeks to weaken the United States and like-minded democracies to undermine their efforts at democratization beyond their borders. Find ASD’s work on Iran on this page.
Hamilton Toplines: March 1-7, 2021
Last week, a prominent theme in Russian messaging around coronavirus vaccines targeted the prospect of Sputnik V’s approval in the EU, with the vaccine’s Twitter account calling for the EU’s European Medicines Agency to review and approve it (the ap [...]
Influence-enza: How Russia, China, and Iran Have Shaped and Manipulated Coronavirus Vaccine Narratives
Introduction When Vladimir Putin announced last August that Russia had granted regulatory approval for Sputnik V, the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, it signaled—albeit perhaps prematurely—not only a potential turning point in the fight to end th [...]
Hamilton Toplines: February 22-28, 2021
Last week, Russian state media seized on a story involving “leaked” U.K. Foreign Office documents that allegedly revealed the “UK government's covert operations aimed at tarnishing Russia's image.” The outlets used the story to accuse both the U.K. [...]
Hamilton Toplines: February 8-14, 2021
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats highlighted various instances of alleged censorship by social media companies—a recurring theme in Russia’s external messaging. State media cited Twitter’s ban of Project Veritas as an example of politica [...]
Hamilton Toplines: February 1-7, 2021
In last week’s coronavirus vaccine developments, U.K. medical journal The Lancet published the results of a peer-reviewed study that placed Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine’s efficacy at a level comparable to that of leading Western vaccines. Russian stat [...]
Iran’s Supreme Tweeter
Was Ayatollah Khamenei behind a now-banned Twitter account that threatened to assassinate former President Trump? Recently, Twitter permanently suspended an account—@Khamenei_site–following a tweet that was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled thr [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 23-31, 2021
The Russian embassy in Mexico’s Twitter account received uncharacteristically high engagement last week after a January 25 phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during which they discu [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 16-22, 2021
While the weekend’s protests against the detention of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia fell outside of the week monitored, his arrest was accompanied by official statements characterizing Navalny as a criminal, crit [...]
Censorship and the Capitol Riot: How Big Tech Became the Target of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian Messaging
Overview Since the riot at the U.S. capitol on January 6, there has been a clear element of schadenfreude in Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media coverage of political and social disunion in the United States. That adversarial state media outle [...]
Hamilton Toplines: January 9-15, 2021
In response to tech platforms’ more aggressive content moderation in the wake of the capitol riots (including Facebook and Twitter banning President Trump), RT has drilled down on the narrative of censorship, with isolated examples from other Russia [...]
Hamilton Toplines: December 26, 2020-January 1, 2021
Last week, Russian state media and diplomats continued to champion the Sputnik V vaccine, with the announcement of a deal for Venezuela to buy 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine receiving particular attention. Four of the top ten most-retweeted [...]
Hamilton Toplines: December 12-18, 2020
Russian state media and diplomats sought to characterize the attribution of the SolarWinds hack that affected multiple U.S. government agencies and private sectors companies to Russia as part of the tradition of the United States blaming Russia for [...]