Europol, the official law enforcement agency of the European Union, announced on Monday that it had disrupted 14,200 online posts linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Authorities from 19 countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States, and Sweden, joined forces to identify and disrupt IRGC-linked content online.
The joint efforts saw authorities coordinate from February 13 until April 28 to carry out joint referrals to online platforms and share intelligence on the IRGC’s online activities across mainstream social media, streaming services, blog sites, and websites.
The IRGC spread its propaganda in multiple languages, including in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Persian, and Spanish, and featured material that ranged from speeches praising martyrdom to AI-generated videos glorifying the IRGC and calls to avenge its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Europol noted that the investigations led to new discoveries regarding the interconnectedness of IRGC-linked websites’ operations and online architecture.
The investigations also led to content affiliated with the Islamic regime’s proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, being discovered and removed.
The IRGC relies on a network of hosting service providers across multiple jurisdictions, from Russia to the United States, which enables it to maintain its online presence.
The European authorities also identified the use of cryptocurrency transactions to sustain and amplify their online reach.
