Start with a simple fact. An IRGC-linked Telegram channel, run by people connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a group the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Australia all formally designate as a terrorist organization, circulated a video of Candace Owens this weekend.
They translated her remarks into Persian. Packaged them. Pushed them to an Iranian audience as useful content.
Terror organizations are selective about what they amplify. The IRGC runs a tight operation. When they share an American commentator’s video with their followers, it’s because that video earns its place in the feed.
Owens earned hers.
In the clip, she accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of manufacturing a pretext for war with Iran. She argued that Israel profits from endless regional chaos. She told US President Donald Trump’s supporters they’d been betrayed, that the president had quietly abandoned the anti-war promises that got him elected.
And then she went further, describing Zionism as an ideology that justifies, in her words, “murder and take and steal whatever we want” in the name of divine chosenness.
IRGC weaponizes Owen's ramblings
The IRGC channel didn’t run all of that. It trimmed. Tightened. Turned the rambling into something cleaner and more pointed. The editors in Tehran didn’t fabricate anything. They just found the sharpest parts and hit publish. The raw material was Owens’s. The packaging was theirs.
That’s worth separating clearly. Criticizing American foreign policy is fair game. Questioning whether the US should be edging toward another Middle East conflict is a reasonable thing to argue in public. These debates belong in a democracy. Plenty of serious people are having them.
But there’s a meaningful gap between that kind of criticism and describing an entire national movement as a theology of theft and murder. One is an argument. The other is the sort of sweeping charge that has a long, ugly history of being used to dehumanize Jews. It’s also not coincidentally exactly the kind of language that plays well in Tehran.
Owens could say she can’t control who reposts her. Fair enough, technically. But you do control what you say. You control whether your argument is built on evidence or on rhetoric that flatters the worst actors in the room.
When a regime that hangs gay men, jails journalists, arms proxy militias across four countries, and has spent decades calling for Israel’s destruction finds your commentary worth translating and distributing, that’s a signal worth taking seriously.
Tehran has been running the same story for 40 years: Washington and Tel Aviv are the villains, Iran is defending itself, and anyone who objects is either a fool or a Zionist stooge. Owens didn’t arrive at that story through deep foreign policy analysis. She arrived at their talking points from a different direction, and they recognized her when she showed up.
Why? That’s the more interesting question.
My read is that this has less to do with Iran than with a particular flavor of American populism that’s always hunting for a new enemy. Globalists. Neocons. The Zionist lobby.
The labels rotate, but the underlying logic stays fixed: Real Americans are being sold out by a shadowy elite, and anyone willing to name that elite loudly enough becomes a hero of the cause. It’s a story that feels satisfying and explains everything, which is usually a sign that it explains very little.
The IRGC knows that story. They tell their own version of it.
Owens has every right to say what she thinks. Nobody’s disputing that. But when a designated terrorist organization decides your message is worth translating and broadcasting to its audience, the least you can do is ask yourself what, exactly, you’ve been handing them.