For the past week or so, I’ve been following Iranian media closely, mostly through Telegram. It’s fascinating in the worst way. Spend enough time there, alongside the formal output of Tasnim, Fars, Mehr, Press TV, and the channels around them, and you start to see a warped version of reality.
Facts are bent, shuffled, or buried under spectacle. And aside from the occasional quote from us at The Jerusalem Post, this ecosystem has lately produced some of the wildest conspiracy theories I’ve seen in years.
Some of these claims appear in official or semi-official media. Others live just outside it, in Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked Telegram channels, hard-line Persian X accounts, and commentators who push the story further than a formal newsroom will.
That difference matters, though only to a point. The official outlet sets the line. The surrounding ecosystem takes it further, makes it darker, stranger, and more shareable. The audience ends up consuming it all as one media world.
Recent reporting on Iran’s disinformation push has described exactly this kind of structure, amplified by internet restrictions and state control over the flow of information.
Take the Netanyahu story. Earlier this week, Tasnim pushed speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have been killed or wounded. There was no evidence of a strike on him, and no official confirmation.
Instead, as The Jerusalem Post reported, Tasnim pieced together circumstantial details such as the lack of new video, tighter security, and postponed diplomatic scheduling, then recycled an unverified outside claim. Tasnim itself admitted the allegation had not been officially confirmed or denied. This is how the system works. A few disconnected fragments are arranged into a dramatic, hidden story and passed off as serious analysis.
If that wasn't enough, there was the Lego propaganda video pushed through Tasnim from Iran’s state-run Revayat-e Fath institute. In the opening scene, a Lego Netanyahu and the Devil show Donald Trump a photo album labeled “Jeffrey Epstein File,” after which Trump presses a red button, and the story moves toward the strike on a girls’ school in Minab.
The same video shows retaliatory attacks on Cyprus, Dubai, Bahrain, Riyadh, Erbil, Ben-Gurion Airport, and “Netanyahu’s Office.” It is childish and grotesque at once. It also tells you a lot about how this media world operates. Conspiracy, revenge fantasy, antisemitic imagery, and emotional manipulation are folded together and handed to the public as political storytelling.
The dental theory deserves special attention because it shows how these stories spread. I could not verify it in formal reporting from Tasnim, Fars, Mehr, or Press TV. What can be verified is that it spread widely online in the pro-Iran ecosystem and was reported by outside outlets as a viral rumor.
India Today described posts claiming that Mossad planted doctors and dentists inside Iran and used routine treatment to implant tracking devices in the dental cavities of senior Iranian figures. Another report described similar social media claims about miniature devices hidden in dental work. In both cases, the reporting stressed there was no verified evidence for the allegation.
What makes the dental story interesting is the fear behind it. It tells people the enemy has entered the body itself. Surveillance is no longer just in the phone, the street, or the office.
It’s in the mouth.
It also gives regime supporters a dramatic answer to an uncomfortable question: how Israeli intelligence has repeatedly seemed to know so much about Iran’s leadership circles and movements. A theory like this is easier to absorb than a simpler explanation involving human sources, cyber penetration, compromised communications, or internal leaks.
Let's focus on the nuance for a moment. The most extreme claims do not always appear as clean front-page headlines in formal state media.
Sometimes they circulate through the wider Telegram and X bubble while official outlets push the broader message of infiltration, sabotage, and hidden enemies. The formal line stays cleaner. The surrounding network does the feverish work. The public takes in both at once.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) story works in much the same way, though it crossed more clearly into regime-linked messaging. Around the Quds Day weather in Tehran on Friday, narratives in that ecosystem framed fog and rain as an American-Israeli operation meant to disrupt broadcasts, hide crowd size, and damage morale.
The theory sounds technical enough to impress, sinister enough to spread, and vague enough to survive in a closed media space. The science falls apart immediately. The University of Alaska Fairbanks, which operates HAARP, states directly that the program cannot control or manipulate the weather. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has also rejected claims that HAARP can create or steer weather events.
The broader pattern has been documented. A NewsGuard analysis cited by Euronews found at least 18 false war-related claims from Iranian sources in the early phase of the current conflict, along with artificial intelligence (AI)-doctored or misleading visuals used to present fake battlefield victories.
International media picks up on Iranian conspiracy theories
Euronews cited examples, including a false Mehr claim that Iranian missiles hit the USS Abraham Lincoln, and a Tasnim-published IRGC claim that 650 US troops had been killed or wounded. US Central Command rejected those claims. Euronews also reported that some of the visual material used in the information war came from video games such as Arma 3.
This is why the current Iranian media environment deserves to be read as more than old-fashioned propaganda. It also works as a system of psychological pressure. It gives the regime a way to dodge accountability at moments of visible stress. Pollution can be blamed on hostile engineering.
Anxiety can be tied to foreign plots. Military setbacks can be wrapped in spiritual or conspiratorial language. The authorities do not have to explain poor performance if they can persuade the public that invisible enemies are operating from every direction.
Iran’s restricted information space makes this easier. Euronews, citing Cloudflare data, reported that internet traffic in Iran plunged 98 percent after a near-complete shutdown on February 28.
When citizens have less access to outside reporting and depend more heavily on state-run television, domestic networks, and regime-friendly messaging apps, conspiracy theories have room to harden into an atmosphere. It becomes harder to challenge and easier to normalize.
That’s why following Iranian media through Telegram has become so revealing. It’s a window into how a regime under pressure talks to itself and to its public. The official headline may be polished. The adjacent channel may be completely unhinged. Together, they create the same distorted picture, one in which paranoia is presented as patriotism and fantasy is drafted into national service.