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A small group of New Yorkers lined candles beneath a portrait of Iran’s late leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a recent “vigil” in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, and within minutes, a confrontation turned violent, then viral.
As Jewish rapper Rami Even-Esh approached the March 6 vigil, he noticed something was missing in the pro-regime gathering, which drew only a few dozen people from five far-left groups, including the socialist “Workers World Party.”
“I looked around for images of the regime’s victims,” Even-Esh told Digital, referring to tens of thousands of protesters the Iranian regime reportedly killed earlier this year. “I looked for Iranians who supported the regime, and I didn’t see any.”
Slowly, Even-Esh, who performs under the moniker “Kosha Dillz,” picked up the Khamenei photo, video footage shows, prompting several vigil organizers to quickly tackle him, punch him in the head and kick him as he fell to the ground. He emerged bloodied, and New York Police Department officers arrested both him and one of his assailants.
Video of the confrontation quickly spread online, generating widespread attention, with pro-regime groups framing the event far beyond the park as a symbol of widespread “resistance” to the war in Iran. The incident also offered a telling glimpse into a wider influence campaign now drawing scrutiny.
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Jewish rapper Rami Even-Esh, known as “Kosha Dillz,” ends up bloodied after an altercation with supporters of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at Washington Square Park on March 6, 2026. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Digital)
A new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a think tank based in Princeton, N.J., finds that the vigil — along with a follow-up “Al-Quds Day” protest a week later on March 13 — was organized, promoted and amplified by a well-connected network of far-left U.S. activist groups with documented ties to Iranian state media.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump warned that Iran is pursuing an aggressive disinformation campaign, accusing the regime of using artificial intelligence and coordinated narratives to shape perception beyond traditional battlefields.
Drawing on leaked internal records, dating from 2019 to 2022, from Iran’s state-owned Press TV propaganda network, researchers identified repeated direct contact between Press TV officials and organizers of recent pro-regime protests, as well as patterns of coordination and amplification that helped transform small local gatherings into widely circulated global flashpoints.
The report identifies a structured ecosystem linking U.S. activist groups, intermediary media platforms and Iranian state outlets to a campaign of malign foreign influence, which is defined by the Directorate of National Intelligence as “subversive, undeclared, coercive, or criminal activities by foreign governments, non-state actors or their proxies to affect another nation’s popular or political attitudes, perceptions or behaviors to advance their interests.”
Organizers tied to the New York vigil also coordinated follow-up protests for Al-Quds Day, the Arabic name for “Jerusalem Day,” promoted through the same network of social media accounts, organizations and leadership.
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Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder of “Within Our Lifetime,” leads a chant at a Times Square rally for Al-Quds Day on March 13, 2026, in New York City. A protester holds a bright green sign for the socialist Workers World Party. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Digital has identified at least 75 organizations that have protested in support of Iran’s regime since the conflict began, including 50 that identify as far-left, Marxist, socialist or communist groups, and 22 that are Muslim organizations aligned with forms of political Islam, or Islamism. The remaining organizations fall into overlapping ideological categories.
Many of these groups are connected through a broader activist network linked to American-born tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who is based in Shanghai. Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee and House Oversight Committee have launched investigations, probing whether Singham and the organizations he funds should register as foreign agents, promoting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
Digital has reached out to Singham and the groups organizing the pro-regime protests.
Organizations associated with Singham’s network include the People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, CodePink Women for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, and while they didn’t organize the Khamenei vigil, they participated in Al-Quds Day protests.
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Researchers say that socialist groups that set up a “vigil” on March 6, 2026, for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have close ties to Iran’s state TV propaganda network. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Digital)
The scene at the vigil reflected the mix of political messaging and symbolism that has defined “intersectional” activism of far-left politics in recent years. Organizers draped the table with Khamenei’s image with Palestinian checkered keffiyeh scarves and stocked it with pamphlets framing global conflicts — from Gaza to Haiti and apartheid South Africa — as part of a shared “anti-imperialist” struggle. A copy of the Qur’an sat alongside revolutionary communist literature, blending the kind of ideological and theological messaging that defines the so-called “red-green” alliance of socialists, represented by red, and Muslim theocrats, represented by the color of green for Islam.
Organizers and affiliated groups include a coalition of activist organizations connected to the “United National Antiwar Coalition,” the Workers World Party, the “Bronx Anti-War Coalition” and the ANSWER Coalition, networks of socialists and communists who have organized protests across the United States on foreign policy and domestic issues.
The report’s strongest evidence centers on a history of direct contact between Iranian state media and activists from the groups.
The leaked internal records from Press TV, which is sanctioned by the U.S. government, showed hundreds of communications with the small group of organizers tied to the recent protests, including 83 calls to one senior figure. Researchers found that outreach far exceeded contact with other individuals based in the U.S., suggesting sustained engagement rather than routine media interaction.
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A flag of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei flies in Washington Square Park in New York, N.Y. on Friday, March 6, 2026, as supporters amplify pro-regime messaging. (Rashid Umar Abbasi/ Digital)
The analysis also identified a pattern in which that outreach appeared to happen before protests from 2019 to 2022. According to the report, spikes in contact from Press TV personnel often occurred in the weeks leading up to increased protest activity in the United States, indicating a level of synchronization that researchers say is unlikely to be coincidental.
The report also documents a broader amplification loop: activists appear on Iranian state broadcasts, sharing and reposting state media content and promoting protest activity later picked up by outlets aligned with Iran’s messaging ecosystem.
A separate media platform, “Vox Ummah,” is identified as an intermediary linking U.S.-based activists with Iran-aligned narratives in the “ummah,” an Arabic term for the global community of Muslims, promoting the vigil and Al-Quds protests while republishing content from Iranian state outlets.
The report stops short of asserting direct operational coordination, but it concludes that the overlap of communication and messaging reflects a “repeatable influence pipeline” capable of turning local protest activity into widely distributed political narratives of malign foreign influence.
“A strain of moral confusion has taken hold where a growing number of people in our communities protest America while excusing regimes that jail, torture and silence their own people,” Adam Sohn, co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, told Digital. “That’s not justice. It’s a psychological contagion causing these people to lose sight of what evil actually looks like.”
The report also notes that messaging tied to the vigil, such as references to Khamenei’s “martyrdom,” opposition to U.S. and Israeli policy and alignment with the “Axis of Resistance,” a term invented to describe opposition to U.S. foreign policy, mirrors themes promoted by Iranian state media following Khamenei’s death.
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Police arrest Jewish rapper Rami Even-Esh, “Kosha Dillz,” in Washington Square Park on March 6, 2026, after he protests a pro-Khamenei vigil. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Digital)
On the edge of the Khamenei vigil, Iranian American Reza Ebrahimi, founder of a group called Lion Sun NY, watched the scene unfold with Even-Esh emerging bloodied and handcuffed.
Ebrahimi told Digital he is immune to pro-regime disinformation and propaganda. He was emboldened to see that Even-Esh also didn’t succumb to the intimidation.
He later told him, “I’m proud of you that you’re supporting us.”
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Azziana Solomon contributed to this report.
