“Make Iran Great Again”: Investigating Iranian Support for Regime Change
“Make Iran Great Again”: Investigating Iranian Support for Regime Change
As we noted in our last two newsletters, the FilterLabs team has been keeping a close eye on the Iranian information space for insights on shifting sentiments and narratives in the Islamic Republic over the past few weeks.
Today we take a look at a topic that, while still a minority narrative in Iran’s internet ecosystem, seems to be on the rise: support for regime change.
We saw a rise in mentions of regime change terminology last week — a small uptick even before the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites, and a major spike starting on June 22nd.
As we analyzed our Iran data — which includes a broad, curated feed of geotagged sources including local and state news, social media and messaging app posts, and personal blogs — we found that supporters of regime change employed a range of hashtags across platforms. The hashtag “نظام_پایان” (“end the regime”) gained particular traction on X, especially among diaspora voices. Meanwhile, #MIGA (“Make Iran Great Again”) began trending on X, and to a lesser extent on Telegram, after President Trump used the slogan in a Truth Social post that implicitly signaled support for regime change in Iran.
Critical Voices. Trump’s phrase quickly gained traction among opposition groups in Iran as well as among diaspora groups advocating for political reform. The Kurdish group Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) had already publicly supported regime change via a post on X:
As long as this regime remains in power, the situation will only deteriorate. Therefore, the first and most important prerequisite for saving Iran’s citizens from this crisis, destruction, and darkness is to completely remove and end this regime.
Other Kurdish outlets, including Mokrian, echoed this sentiment. A variety of non-Kurdish groups and individuals also picked up Trump’s messaging to express their support for toppling the Islamic Republic’s leadership.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran, has emerged as an important figure for some segments of the Iranian population advocating for regime change. Many of the groups and individuals supporting regime change are vocal Pahlavi supporters. Pahlavi has adopted MIGA as a slogan for regime change, aligning “again” with a vision of national revival under his leadership and potential return to power, and his supporters have begun using #MIGA to advocate for a secular democratic monarchy under his leadership.
It’s important to note that among pro-regime-change voices, views on the United States vary along a spectrum. Some regard the U.S. as a potential savior, actively calling for its intervention to topple the regime. Others, however, see the U.S. as an external actor that failed to defeat Iran directly but nevertheless created an opening—one that Iranians themselves can now exploit to drive regime change from within.
The Bots are Busy Too. It’s important to note that not all regime-change discourse in the Iranian information space is organic, authentic conversation. FilterLabs’ analysis of our Iran data found that the pro-regime-change discourse was further amplified by what are likely bot-run Telegram accounts. While human Telegram users in Iran tend to avoid overtly hostile language toward the state, bot-run accounts frequently employ explicit curses and aggressive, derogatory rhetoric against the Iranian leadership.
One such account, Ezrailtim, with a pro-Israel and pro-U.S. stance, mocks and criticizes the Iranian state, using MIGA hashtags. In one post, mocking IRGC and Khamenei after the Al-Udeid base attack, it wrote:
Before the attack on Al-Udeid base, the cuckolds told America and Qatar to leave the region 😂
What kind of bastards are these people, and what's worse, the people who believe what they say and follow them are such bastards 😂
Looking Ahead. Will calls for regime change—whether by bots or by humans—continue to grow in the Iranian information space, and will the idea take hold among a wider cross-section of the population? It’s probably too soon to tell. But we’ll be watching to see what unfolds.