A furious new battle has erupted in the Iranian Twittersphere. Several factions of Iranians inside Iran and exiled Iranians have weighed into a debate over whether the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office-funded BBC Persian Service is supporting the ruling clique in Iran.

The BBC Persian Service runs a satellite television channel that is broadcast to Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, although the latter two countries barely get a mention. The focus is very much the Islamic Republic and 90% of the staff of the free-to-view channel were drawn from Iranian newspapers or Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

The controversy began recently after the Twitter hashtag #AyatollahBBC appeared. The use of the hashtag peaked on December 18, with streams of royalist supporting accounts attacking the British public broadcaster for its portrayal of events in Iran.

Crown prince on Manoto
The commotion comes just weeks since heir apparent to the defunct throne of the overthrown Imperial State of Iran, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi who heads the exiled House of Pahlavi, made a ‘Town Hall’ appearance on London-based pro-royalist satellite TV channel Manoto (“Me and You”) which beams into Iran. Pahlavi, 58, who lives in US state Maryland, left Iran at the age of 17 in 1977 for air force training in Texas. Two years later the Islamic Revolution swept his father, the last Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, off the throne.

The exiled prince has been very active recently calling for the ending of the present Iranian regime. His efforts have been made in parallel with the White House stepping up its campaign to throttle the Iranian economy with sanctions in an attempt at forcing changes in Tehran’s approach to the Middle East (or achieve regime change, in the eyes of some cynics). He has accepted a series of speaking engagements on Iran’s future including one at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The sudden spike in the use of the hashtag suggests a new front against the Islamic Republic and the BBC has opened up, with royalists tackling and attempting to drive discourse related to news about the country.

Following the #AyatollahBBC hashtag surge, some Iranian political analysts started switching sides in the debate, no longer supporting the removal of US sanctions directed at Iran and instead moving to the royalists’ camp and calling for an end to the Islamic Republic, which celebrates its 40^th anniversary next year.

The leading proponent of this new wave of support is ex-RAND analyst Alireza Nader, who recently founded a pro-royalist thinktank in Washington, D.C. called “New Iran.”

The Iranian-American has been at the forefront of pushing anti-Islamic Republic news for some months and was seen in the front row of seats behind Pahlavi at the recent so-called Town Hall meeting with the prince on Manoto.

Thread on reformist bias at US Persian language broadcasting. Both @bbcpersian and @VOAIran have a reformist bias but nothing is ever done about it. If Washington wants a serious change in its #Iran policy this is a place to start. https://t.co/wEpHqEYAbG

— Alireza Nader علیرضا نادر (@AlirezaNader) December 18, 2018

Assault on press
The attacks against the BBC have grown in popularity among real users and supporting “bots” that tweet out the hashtag to Iranian Twitter users; however, a quick look at those using the term the most appears to point to accounts based outside of Iran.

One BBC presenter, Farnaz Fassihi, said of the onslaught: “We are harassed & abused on twitter from every side. Especially when you cover politics & places like #Iran where govt. & opposition trolls/supporters are equally vile.”

In July, Haaretz newspaper cited Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky exposing several cases in which Iranian hackers allegedly impersonated legitimate websites. In one reported example, the company said the very same phrase “Ayatollah BBC” was linked to a series of Iranian-run websites impersonating foreign or even Iranian media outlets.