00:04Hello and welcome to The Cube, Euronews' fact-checking show.
00:07If you stumbled across these social media accounts,
00:10you would think they were run by people living in Scotland.
00:14For several months, they shared photos of Scotland,
00:16posts backing Scottish independence,
00:18as well as criticism of the British government.
00:21But researchers uncovered that dozens of these accounts
00:24were carrying out a coordinated campaign
00:27by spreading the same footage and hashtags.
00:29The profile spent months building up credibility with local audiences
00:33before shifting narratives when the US and Israel's offensive against Iran
00:38escalated in late February.
00:40After the war started, they completely pivoted to posting pro-Iran footage
00:46of Iranian strikes on enemies of Iran,
00:51so Israel and other places, I think maybe Saudi Arabia as well.
00:56The content included posts glorifying the deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
01:01as well as AI-generated images claiming to show the destruction of US bases in the Middle East.
01:07Researchers found that these accounts were affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
01:12an elite paramilitary unit which has been accused of peddling foreign influence operations.
01:17Two subsets of accounts were uncovered, one group claiming to be from Scotland and England,
01:22and another from Ireland and Northern Ireland.
01:25Spanish-language profiles claiming to be based in Texas, California, Venezuela and Chile
01:30carried out a similar operation, according to researchers.
01:34Many of the profiles claimed to be women, but in reality used stolen or AI-generated images as a ruse.
01:40Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, says it shut down thousands of IRGC-affiliated accounts
01:47across 19 countries between February and April.
01:50The US-CAPE.
01:52The US-CAPE.
01:53The US-CAPE.
01:55The US-CAPE.
01:55The US-CAPE.
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