Iran’s Internet Blackout and Patagonia Fires Expose Patterns of Global Disinformation

In a disturbing trend highlighting the global spread of disinformation, authoritarian regimes are increasingly using Israel as a vehicle to sow division and erode trust in democratic institutions across multiple continents.

The pattern became starkly evident during Argentina’s recent Patagonia wildfires, when false narratives rapidly spread across social media blaming Israelis for deliberately starting the blazes. Within hours of the disaster, recycled images and viral posts flooded online platforms with allegations of “foreign states” involvement and claims about an “IDF grenade” being found in Patagonia – all supposedly concealed by mainstream media.

Meanwhile in Europe, researchers observed an equally revealing phenomenon. A network of pro-Scottish independence accounts on X (formerly Twitter) suddenly went silent – their disappearance coinciding precisely with Iran’s nationwide internet shutdown amid anti-government protests. British media and independent analysts had previously identified many of these accounts as part of an Iranian influence operation masquerading as Scottish voices.

“Two continents. Two narratives. One underlying mechanism,” as one observer noted.

The connection between these seemingly unrelated events has become clearer as platform transparency tools provide researchers with better data about the true geographic origins of online accounts. What appears to be local outrage often comes from thousands of miles away.

For instance, accounts branding themselves as “MAGA” conservatives focused on American cultural issues have been traced to Bangladesh. Similarly, accounts claiming to post eyewitness reports from Gaza during recent conflicts often operate from Pakistan or Indonesia.

The January 2026 Iranian internet shutdown inadvertently exposed this infrastructure of deception. When Tehran cut connectivity nationwide to suppress domestic dissent, clusters of supposedly independent local voices in Western democracies simultaneously stopped posting – revealing their connection to Iranian state operations.

“When the lights go out at headquarters, the field offices go dark too,” as analysts observed.

This pattern demonstrates how authoritarian regimes exploit the naturally contentious nature of democratic discourse. Rather than creating controversies from scratch, operators impersonate participants in existing debates – around separatist movements, immigration, populism, or foreign conflicts – and amplify the most divisive perspectives through distortion and falsehood.

Israel has proven particularly useful for this purpose. As a Western-aligned democracy in the Middle East, it serves as a proxy target for liberal democracy itself. Anti-Israel narratives also provide a veneer of respectability for recycling classic antisemitic conspiracy theories about hidden power and global manipulation.

Most significantly, if Israel can be portrayed as uniquely evil, then virtually any crisis anywhere can be folded into an existing narrative framework. The Patagonia fires demonstrated this dynamic perfectly – Israel was reflexively inserted into an unrelated catastrophe because audiences had been primed to accept such accusations without scrutiny.

These narratives follow a clear supply chain. State broadcasters and aligned outlets from Tehran, Moscow, Doha and Beijing set the initial framing, each with distinct tones but sharing the objective of undermining Western institutions. This content then spreads through social platforms where it’s stripped of context and redistributed as authentic grassroots opinion.

The strategy reflects a familiar authoritarian playbook: control information at home while exporting confusion abroad. When regimes face internal challenges, they often compensate by escalating external information warfare, using destabilization of other societies to offset domestic fragility.

“Israel is not merely a target in this ecosystem. It is a tool – the tip of the spear in a broader campaign designed to erode confidence not only in Israel, but in the legitimacy of democratic societies themselves,” noted Micha Danzig, an attorney and former IDF soldier who tracks these patterns.

While each viral falsehood might seem like an isolated incident requiring individual debunking, security experts warn that the overall pattern is systemic and represents a coordinated assault on democratic discourse. Israel may be the most visible test case, but free societies everywhere are the ultimate target.