Iranian Influence Operations - IRGC, MOIS, Basij joint campaign
Inside the Report
With the entry of influencers (Figure 3 in the report), the campaign enter
ed the next operations stage. The content and tweets were distributed and republished by those influential IRGC Cyber Units. The narrative between these users reveals their role in promoting the campaign and the purpose of the personas.
Thousands of bots and fake accounts with low followership belonging to Basij Cyber Units widely republished and retweeted tweets published by influencers and retweeted and promoted the posts by other accounts that had used the given hashtag.
This campaign was continued for 60.6 hours by the IRGC Intelligence Cyber Units using thousands of low paid Basij accounts resembling a Dunbar's Number concentric circles of trust throughout the country (Figure 4 in the report).