Iran, along with China and Russia, has also been spreading disinformation about the origin of Covid-19.
Iran has used the coronavirus crisis to launch propaganda and disinformation campaigns against the United States, coordinating closely with China and Russia, according to a new report by the U.S. State Department's Center for Global Engagement and reviewed by Politico.
The report, which has not been made public, highlights several examples of coordinated efforts by Iran, China, and Russia to spread disinformation. One such effort is the false claim by their state media that the coronavirus is a US biological weapon. In one case, Li Jianzhao, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, tweeted an article in Chinese media that made the same false claim. In another case, Russia Today cited a similar claim made by Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“What we’ve seen since the beginning of this health crisis in China coming under control is that the Chinese Communist Party really began and continued to make a coordinated effort to change the narrative,” Leah Gabriel, coordinator of the U.S. State Department’s Center for Global Engagement, told Politico.
Ms. Gabriel added: “[The Chinese Communist Party’s] [disinformation] started by allowing Russian disinformation to spread on Chinese social media that the US was the source of the virus, [and] escalated to questioning the origin of the virus in state media and even spreading disinformation that the US was the source of the virus.”
According to Politico, analysts outside the US government have also observed the same trend, which the US State Department has pointed out.
“We have seen a convergence of narratives around COVID-19, both in the public diplomacy campaign and the covert campaign originating from Iran, China, and Russia, particularly in blaming the United States for its response to the crisis and its current role in geopolitical affairs,” Camille Francois, head of innovation at analytics firm Graphica, told Politico.
Source: Voice of America
