Iran’s Three-Decade Campaign to Weaponize Antisemitism in the West

The report, titled The War for Western Minds, maps an infrastructure designed to bridge the gap between ideological opposites. By hosting conferences like the New Horizon event—which the U.S. Treasury flagged as a recruitment hub for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Iran has brought white nationalists, anti-war progressives, and Holocaust deniers together under a shared hostility toward Israel and the United States. This strategy mirrors the theories of Russian political strategist Alexander Dugin, who has long advocated for exploiting domestic political fractures to weaken the center.

Beyond physical gatherings, the center identifies a digital strategy centered on the "72-hour window." During this critical period following major news events, coordinated Iranian narratives are pushed into the public sphere before fact-checkers or journalists can mount a response. According to SWC CEO Jim Berk, this approach forces a shift in how the public views hate speech: moving away from seeing it as mere prejudice toward recognizing it as a strategic weapon. To counter this, the organization is releasing media literacy guides, aiming to equip the public with the tools to identify foreign propaganda before it takes root in the digital ecosystem.