Selling Iran King Without a Kingdom: How Coordinated Networks Manufacture the Appearance of Mass Support

On the afternoon of February 14, 2026, anyone browsing MSN, Microsoft’s news aggregator would have encountered a concentration of content about a single political figure: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah. The articles came from credible outlets such as Reuters, The Hill, Real Clear Politics, and AFP. Their headlines formed a coherent narrative arc that Pahlavi was urging humanitarian US intervention in Iran. They claimed that a quarter of a million people had rallied for him in Munich and that world leaders were listening. Interspersed among these were nostalgic photo galleries of Tehran before 1980, videos about Iran before the Islamic Revolution from Manoto TV, and military explainers mapping US bases in the Middle East or recounting how America obliterated half of Iran’s navy in eight hours. Taken together, delivered simultaneously on a single user’s feed, they created a three-act persuasion architecture designed to prime, justify, and sell a specific political product. This is not a story about media bias. It is a story about how the infrastructure of the modern information ecosystem can be weaponised to manufacture the appearance of consensus, and how in the case of Iran that manufactured consensus may serve the very regime it claims to oppose.

MSN Discover, like Google News, Apple News, and YouTube’s recommendation engine, is driven by algorithms that prioritise engagement velocity, meaning the speed and volume of clicks, shares, and dwell time a story generates in its first hours. When clusters of related stories spike simultaneously, the system interprets this as a trending topic and amplifies the entire cluster to millions of additional users. Engagement produces visibility, and visibility produces more engagement (see Covington et al. 2016; Gillespie 2018; Napoli 2019 ­– and see Google and Apple’s descriptions). This system is designed to surface what people are genuinely interested in, and it can also be gamed.

Forensic analysis by cybersecurity firm Treadstone 71 and researcher Dancho Danchev documented a vast network of synthetic accounts built around Reza Pahlavi’s online presence. Based on more than 70 million account records spanning 2022 to 2025, they reported 356,941 bot accounts created at precise 60 second intervals over nearly two decades, an Instagram fake follower rate of 89.54 percent, 55 percent of comments that were exact duplicates, and what they described as a Metronome Coherence Index of 1.0, indicating machine generated timing with no detectable human variation (see here and here). These figures are often dismissed as vanity metrics, artificial inflation of apparent popularity. That interpretation overlooks the network’s strategic function. Its power lies in manipulating third party aggregators. When tens of thousands of coordinated accounts engage with a newly published Reuters article within minutes, the algorithm cannot distinguish coordination from organic virality. It promotes the article broadly. The bots do not persuade readers directly. They persuade the algorithm, which then persuades readers at scale.

The MSN homepage on February 14 and 15 did not display a random assortment of Iran related content. No organic news cycle produces such structural symmetry across a single user’s feed at the same time. It requires concentrated engagement that drives algorithmic amplification, paid promotion, or both. It unfolded in three movements.

The first act was emotional preparation. Nostalgic imagery of pre-revolutionary Iran and Manoto TV features romanticising the Shah era established a sense of lost paradise. Such content generates strong engagement because wistfulness is a powerful emotional driver. Manoto TV has been documented manipulating audio on Iranian protest footage, replacing anti-regime chants with pro monarchy slogans. Its presence alongside Reuters and AFP was not an editorial endorsement. It was a consequence of engagement metrics that can be artificially inflated. The second act normalised military framing. Maps of US bases and historical features about American operations against Iran’s navy framed intervention as familiar and routine rather than extraordinary escalation. The third act delivered the political figure. Pahlavi appeared across multiple outlets calling for humanitarian intervention and urging US action, presented as the voice of supposedly 250,000 people in Munich (a number that forensic examination has shown as exaggerated). The emotional nostalgia of the first act and the strategic tension of the second were resolved in a single personality positioned as the natural leader of a nation he has not visited in 47 years.

Among the most disturbing findings in the Treadstone 71 analysis was the identification of what researchers termed dual use actors. More than 450,000 accounts were found to amplify both Pahlavi’s narrative and messaging aligned with the Iranian regime. Of these, 293 accounts were traced to devices operating inside Iran using state authorized infrastructure referred to as Iran Android App terminals that require government level access. This suggests that individuals within the Islamic Republic’s own security ecosystem were posing as pro Pahlavi diaspora activists. The strategic logic is not difficult to discern. Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC’s Quds Force, stated in February 2025 that monarchism’s weakness and lack of domestic roots helped the Islamic Republic survive. The state newspaper Vatan e Emrooz credited Pahlavi and royalists with fragmenting the opposition and neutralising genuine overthrow efforts.

The amplification machine therefore serves two masters. It manufactures apparent mass support for Pahlavi that can be presented abroad as legitimacy. Simultaneously, it elevates an alternative that poses no operational threat while overshadowing organized resistance inside Iran. One detail from the MSN feed captured the dynamic in miniature. An Irish News US article about Pahlavi’s Munich appearance was illustrated with a photograph of women wearing yellow scarves and Free Iran badges, the unmistakable visual signature of the NCRI and MEK rally held the previous day, not the Pahlavi event. Whether through editorial oversight or algorithmic image matching, the mobilisation of one movement was visually appropriated to validate another. It was a microcosm of the information system. Real courage became decorative evidence for a manufactured narrative.

At first glance, it appears irrational for a theocratic regime to benefit from monarchist messaging. Viewed strategically, the logic becomes clearer. A weak but visible opposition fragments the field. A media prominent figure with no operational infrastructure inside Iran diverts attention without generating mobilisation. Symbolism replaces structure. The framing also reshapes the struggle. Instead of a forward-looking contest between authoritarian rule and democratic sovereignty, the narrative becomes Shah versus Supreme Leader. This sidelines the many Iranians who reject both forms of autocracy and obscures republican democratic aspirations.

The dynamic plays a divisive role. Between 30 and 40 percent of Iran’s population consists of diverse national and ethnic communities including Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Azeris, Turkmen, and others. These communities have longstanding grievances involving discrimination, underdevelopment, and cultural suppression. A centralised monarchist restoration model by posing patriotism above freedom and democracy does not naturally incorporate demands for decentralisation, linguistic rights, or regional representation. When such demands are dismissed as separatism, significant segments of the population feel excluded from the proposed alternative. Fragmentation serves the incumbent regime. If communities doubt that a post regime order would respect their rights, unified mobilisation becomes less likely. A media-centred monarchist figure also generates controlled polarisation. Amplification provokes backlash from republicans, leftists, ethnic activists, and reformists. Opposition energy is redirected into internal ideological conflict rather than coordinated institutional challenge. Predictability matters as well. A figure without a disciplined domestic network threatens narratives, not power structures. Narratives can be managed. Organised resistance cannot.

Within monarchist circles, another revealing shift has taken place. Many long-standing hard-core monarchists who maintained ideological loyalty for decades have been sidelined. In their place, a newer inner circle has emerged, including individuals whose recent professional or institutional trajectories intersected with the Islamic Republic’s ecosystem through media roles, advisory positions, or indirect regime-linked networks. If restoration were to be pursued through grassroots mobilisation, veteran monarchists with established constituencies might be expected to lead. Instead, the structure increasingly resembles brand management rather than movement building. From a strategic perspective, a newer, media-oriented cohort without entrenched monarchist networks is more adaptable and easier to coordinate. Such a formation is less likely to generate independent mobilizing capacity inside Iran. For an authoritarian system, a controllable media phenomenon is safer than an autonomous political force.

Another dimension concerns the conduct of segments of the monarchist support base. In diaspora communities, many reports have surfaced of harassment, intimidation, and physical confrontations linked to aggressive monarchist activism. Business owners have described pressure to display royalist symbols and coordinated online targeting when refusing to comply. There have been accounts of assaults following political disputes. In one widely discussed case, allegations circulated that a restaurant owner who refused to display monarchist flags was later killed under contested circumstances. While details remain disputed, the perception of intimidation has taken root.

Patterns of online harassment, and labelling critics as traitors or regime agents have been documented by activists across the political spectrum. Such tactics undermine claims of democratic culture. This atmosphere intersects with Iran’s national diversity. Kurdish, Baluchi, Arab, Azeri, and Turkmen activists who articulate demands for decentralisation or cultural rights are frequently branded separatists within monarchist discourse. When rights-based demands are reframed as threats to territorial integrity, nearly one third of the population is implicitly marginalised. Authoritarian systems often survive by encouraging opposition fragmentation. A movement that alienates national minorities and tolerates intimidation weakens its own credibility while reinforcing the regime’s narrative that alternatives are exclusionary or destabilising.

Any serious assessment must hold two realities at once. Not all visible support is artificial. Yet in the absence of free elections inside Iran, attaching numerical weight to that support is inherently unreliable. In a closed system where polling is constrained, dissent is criminalised, and digital metrics are easily manipulated, claims of percentages or mandates rest on fragile ground. What can be said is that a segment of Iranians, more visible in diaspora and online spaces than in demonstrable organisation inside the country, are drawn to Reza Pahlavi and the idea of monarchy. Understanding the emotional and political roots of that attraction helps explain how digital amplification can magnify limited constituencies into the appearance of broad consensus.

For some, the appeal is rooted in selective memory. The pre-1979 era is often recalled, comparatively, as a time of greater social openness and order. Nostalgia is powerful. Social media campaigns that circulate curated images of Tehran before 1980 do not invent this sentiment. They activate it and attach it to a present political brand. For others, support reflects exhaustion. After decades of repression and failed reforms, a familiar name can seem to offer clarity in a fragmented landscape. Repetition across platforms breeds familiarity, and familiarity can be mistaken for legitimacy. In digital environments, visibility is often confused with viability. A strategic argument also circulates that Pahlavi could serve as a transitional symbol rather than a restorationist monarch. In this framing, monarchy is presented as a temporary unifying mechanism, a bridge toward democratic institutions still undefined. Messaging emphasises unity and reconciliation while remaining vague about institutional design and the distribution of power. This narrative is particularly amplified by the Iran International TV, owned by Volant Media UK Ltd with fundings tied to Saudi Arabia’s business and possibly royal circles according to The Guardian, and one of the most watched Persian-language foreign news outlets among Iranians.

Similar assurances of temporary authority were once offered during Iran’s 1979 revolution. Promises of limited roles and swift withdrawal proved illusory as power consolidated rapidly. The lesson is structural. Authority justified as temporary during upheaval has a persistent tendency to become permanent. Iranians have reason to be wary of undefined experiments in concentrated power. Social media dynamics intensify these motivations. Synchronised headlines, trending hashtags, and high engagement create impressions of momentum. Humans interpret momentum as validation, and algorithms reward rapid engagement with greater visibility. Yet herd momentum is volatile. When amplification slows or symbolic enthusiasm fails to translate into organisation, digital waves dissipate quickly. What appears to be a rising tide can flatten once algorithmic acceleration subsides. Digital infrastructure does not create belief from nothing. It identifies existing emotional currents and magnifies them into disproportionate visibility. Genuine sentiment may exist. But when engagement systems amplify it beyond organizational depth, perception can outpace reality.

In sum, the vulnerability lies in the structure of the information ecosystem. None of this requires collusion by journalists, and in this case reporters ostensibly covered events and cited available figures in good faith. When engagement metrics determine visibility, the ability to manipulate metrics becomes the ability to shape perception. For Iran, the consequences are significant. News cycles dominated by monarchist spectacle divert attention from the more than the reported 3,000 people killed in January’s uprising, the 50,000 detained, the expedited executions, and the organised resistance operating at great personal risk. The Iranian people, whose uprising has spread across 400 cities and whose chant, “Death to the oppressor, whether Shah or Leader”, rejects both theocracy and monarchy, deserve an information environment that reflects their lived reality rather than an engineered one. Recognising how the machine operates is the first step. Asking who benefits is the next.

References

Covington, P., Adams, J., and Sargin, E. (2016). Deep neural networks for YouTube recommendations. Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, 191–198.

Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press.

Napoli, P. M. (2019). Social media and the public interest: Media regulation in the disinformation age. Columbia University Press.

Further Reading on E-International Relations