Wikipedia has cited IRGC or Iranian-regime media at least 78,665 times across its English, Persian, Arabic, and Spanish-language versions, The Jerusalem Post found.
Realistically, this means Wikipedia has closer to 100,000 references based on information from the propaganda arm of Iran's Islamic Regime. The findings suggest a systematic pattern of IRGC-linked media and editors infiltrating Wikipedia articles to frame the narrative of key topics such as Iran's politics and military.
For the investigation, the Post used code to mass analyze citations to IRGC-affiliated media across four Wikipedia language editions using the MediaWiki API. The findings ultimately reveal a systematic pattern of state media citation infiltration, narrative manipulation, and coordinated editing that spans the world's largest encyclopedia.
The issue was first flagged by Ashley Rindsberg, an investigative journalist covering Wikipedia manipulation, who wrote in the Daily Mail that he had found 29,000 examples of Wikipedia citing Iranian state media outlets.
"Wikipedia editors are copy-pasting text from official terror websites operated into articles," Rindsberg said.
The Post decided to verify this independently using coding and expand the data from English-only to English, Arabic, Persian, and Spanish Wikipedia.
Prevalence of IRGC citations in Wikipedia
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Persian-language Wikipedia shows the heaviest prevalence of IRGC-linked citations at 5.8x the English Wikipedia rate. Mehr News, Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), IRNA, Fars, and Tasnim News were the most cited in English-language Wikipedia (in that order). ISNA and Fars in Persian language, and Tasnim in Arabic language.
There were 52,989 verified IRGC-linked references on Persian Wikipedia. The second highest was English-language Wikipedia with 17,557 verified citations, followed by 7,341 in Arabic Wikipedia and 778 in Spanish Wikipedia. This leads to a total of 78,665 verified citations across all 4 editions.
However, the actual number is likely much higher. A historical estimate, which would take into account reverted or deleted edits, would bring the total to around 157,330. With indirect influence (narrative framing without direct citations), the maximum is estimated at 275,327.
What does this entail? IRGC-aligned editing on Wikipedia goes beyond simply adding citations to state media. It involves running campaigns to gradually shift the narrative on key articles toward positions more favorable to the Islamic Republic. One way this is done is by softening language, for example, by replacing harsher and more critical words with gentler alternatives.
This could mean replacing the word "terrorist" with "resistance fighter" or "regime" with "government." These changes can be small enough that they avoid triggering suspicion of influence campaigns and are seen to be legitimate copy-editing.
Another way this is done is through citation laundering, which is where IRGC-affiliated media outlets are introduced as 'reliable sources' on Wikipedia, despite many of them being sanctioned entities or known state propaganda channels.
This is done through the following process: a state media outlet publishes an article framing an event in a way favorable to Iran; a Wikipedia editor then adds this source as a citation; the citation lends an air of sourced credibility to the IRGC narrative; and then other sources may later cite the Wikipedia article itself, completing the information laundering cycle.
Linked to this is citation swapping, which is where Iran-linked editors replace existing reliable citations with IRGC media citations that support the same facts but with different framing. This is hard to detect.
There are also two more aggressive ways of narrative framing: coordinated revert wars and content deletion. Coordinated revert wars are when critical content is added to IRGC-related articles by independent editors, and then coordinated accounts engage in revert wars to remove it. This can mean that articles about human rights abuses during protests can be reframed by coordinated action. Content deletion is more extreme and involves editors completely removing unfavorable content.
The most edited articles
The Post's script analysis also showed which English-language Wikipedia articles featured the most IRGC citations. 'List of military equipment manufactured in Iran' featured the highest number (156 citations). This was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran (75), Shahab Hosseini (73), and 2023-24 Persian Gulf Pro League (66). Two political ones - 2017 Iranian presidential election and the list of candidates in the 2017 Iran election - were also in the top 10.
In Persian language Wikipedia, the script showed that IRNA and Fars News are treated as mainstream sources and are not flagged as state media. It also showed that articles about political prisoners, protests, and IRGC operations exhibit systematic bias toward government narratives. Additionally, the editor community is small enough that a coordinated group of 10-20 accounts can effectively control key articles.
The script analysis showed one more interesting thing; the Post asked it to analyze edit timestamps, the results of which revealed that suspicious editing activity clusters during Tehran Standard Time (UTC+3:30) working hours, approximately 08:00-18:00 IRST. Such burst editing patterns suggest shift-based work in line with Iran work hours.
The Post's Methodology
The core findings of this report - the citation counts - was obtained through the following verifiable process. First, we compiled a master list of 21 IRGC-affiliated media domains from US Treasury/OFAC sanctions lists (Fars News, Press TV), EU sanctions designations, academic literature on Iranian state media, and Wikimedia Foundation Reliable Sources noticeboard discussions. We then verified that each domain was either directly IRGC-operated, IRIB state broadcasting, or editorially controlled by Iranian state entities. Secondly, we queried the Wikipedia API's endpoint for each domain; this returns every Wikipedia article containing a hyperlink to the queried domain.
After this, there were three further steps: cross-edition collection (executing the same query against four Wikipedia language editions); data integrity checking; and then verification and cross-checking.
The Post's data shows the lowest bound of the number of citations - and therefore the verified number. The true scale of IRGC influence on Wikipedia lies between a verifiable minimum and an estimated maximum (which is likely a lot higher). The verified minimum represents only citations that are currently live on Wikipedia and directly link to known IRGC-affiliated domains. These can be independently verified by anyone with either API access or painstakingly by hand.
However, this does not mean that every citation to an Iranian state media outlet is evidence of an IRGC operation, as some citations to IRNA or ISNA may be editorially relevant depending on the context. Furthermore, not every citation counts as 'disinformation.' For example, a citation to Fars News may accurately report a fact while simultaneously framing it in a certain way.
There are some other limitations. VPN or proxy usage can mask true IP origins, making real geolocation impossible to determine. Additionally, this investigation covers 4 of Wikipedia's 300+ language editions. IRGC-affiliated media is likely cited in other language editions such as Turkish, Urdu, and Hindi.
The analysis shows that while Wikipedia is a widely used tool used by billions, it is vulnerable to the same state-sponsored influence as social media, and should not be relied on to produce objective, unbiased content.