So we’ve got the United States Navy parked on Iran’s doorstep, a full naval blockade choking off their ports, and our military in an active confrontation with a regime that just shot down one of our planes — and meanwhile, one of Iran’s top propaganda guys is sitting in a suburb of Los Angeles, California, collecting a fat monthly paycheck from Tehran to post memes on Twitter. His name is Meysam Zamanabadi, and he lives in Glendora. That’s in LA County. About thirty minutes from a Costco and a Jamba Juice.
Unbelievable. We’re blockading their ports and this guy is blockading our news feeds.
Here’s the setup. Zamanabadi has been living in California for roughly a decade. His job — and yes, it is his actual job — is managing the English-language social media accounts for Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and one of Iran’s chief negotiators in the current standoff with the United States. Every tweet, every hashtag, every slick little meme you’ve seen from Ghalibaf’s account that reads like it was written by a twenty-something American communications major? That’s Zamanabadi. Because he basically IS an American communications major. With a doctorate.
Oh, did we mention the doctorate? This guy earned a PhD in Media Psychology from Fielding Graduate University in California. Media Psychology. That’s a fancy way of saying he studied how to manipulate people through screens. He got that degree from an American institution, funded presumably by American student resources, and then turned around and used every single thing he learned to craft propaganda for a hostile foreign government. From his couch. In Glendora.
Pop quiz: What does Iran’s parliament speaker pay for top-tier American-educated propaganda? About $11,000 a month. That’s roughly 40 million Iranian Tomans funneled through family connections and currency exchanges in Ferdowsi Square. Every month, like clockwork, Tehran wires the cash and Zamanabadi fires up the laptop to tell the English-speaking world how reasonable Iran is and how mean America is being.
And it gets better. His father, Gholamhossein Zamanabadi, wasn’t some random guy. He was an Islamic Coalition Party member and an intelligence officer who ran Iran’s post-Revolution journalist censorship program. So daddy spent his career silencing the Iranian press, and junior moved to California to manipulate the American press. A real family business.
IranWire, an investigative outlet, is the one that blew the lid off this whole thing. They identified Zamanabadi as the guy behind the curtain — the one crafting Ghalibaf’s “perfect English, memes, hashtags & emojis” that make Iran’s parliamentary leadership look hip and relatable on social media. You know, the kind of posts that get shared by useful idiots on college campuses who think Iran is just misunderstood.
Now think about the timing here. We are in an active military confrontation with Iran. Our Navy is deployed. Our pilots are flying missions. One of our airmen got shot down and had to be rescued by CIA operatives using classified technology. American servicemembers are putting their lives on the line — and this guy is in a California suburb running a propaganda operation for the other side. He’s not doing it in secret. He’s not hiding in a bunker. He’s doing it from a house with a two-car garage and a reasonable commute to downtown LA.
How is this man still in this country? Seriously. We deport people for overstaying a visa by six months. We’ve got ICE rounding up gang members and criminal aliens from coast to coast. But the son of an Iranian intelligence officer, who holds a doctorate in psychological manipulation, who receives monthly wire transfers from Tehran, who actively runs information warfare against the United States on behalf of a government we are currently in a military standoff with — that guy gets to stay?
(Somebody in Homeland Security want to take a crack at explaining that one? We’ll wait.)
This is what drives regular Americans absolutely crazy. We spend billions on intelligence agencies, counterterrorism task forces, cyber warfare divisions, and all the rest of it — and a literal foreign propaganda operative is living in plain sight in Los Angeles County, collecting $11,000 a month from the enemy, using a degree WE gave him to run information ops against US. It’s not even a secret. An investigative outlet found him. If journalists can find him, what exactly is the FBI doing?
The man studied how to psychologically manipulate Americans through media. He got a doctorate in it. From an American school. And then he went to work for Iran. From America. While Iran was threatening America. And we just… let it happen.
If you wrote this in a screenplay, the studio would send it back and say it was too unrealistic. Nobody would believe the U.S. government was this oblivious. And yet here we are — deploying aircraft carriers to Iran’s coast while one of their best propagandists enjoys the California sunshine and a monthly direct deposit from Tehran.
Someone get this man a one-way ticket home. He can put his Media Psychology degree to work explaining to the Ayatollah why the U.S. Navy is parked outside his window.