Meet the Iranian Propagandist Who Manages Iran’s Social Media. He’s Based in California

It seems like every son and daughter of a top Iranian official winds up as a United States resident, living the high life as they remain loyal and helpful to the Iranian regime. 

Marco Rubio is clearing them out, and one hopes that he does something about Iran’s premier social media propagandist, who currently runs the social media accounts of Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and one of Iran’s chief negotiators with the United States. 

🚨 Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf is posting in perfect English, with memes, hashtags & emojis, straight from CALIFORNIA.

IranWire just published an article claiming that Ghalibaf’s X account is run by ex-advisor Meysam Zamanabadi, living in Glendora, LA for a decade.…

— Sana Ebrahimi Ledene (@__Injaneb96) April 12, 2026

 Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf is  posting in perfect English, with memes, hashtags & emojis, straight from CALIFORNIA.

IranWire just published an article claiming that Ghalibaf’s X account is run by ex-advisor Meysam Zamanabadi, living in Glendora, LA for a decade.

Meysam is the son of one of the Islamic Republic’s first intelligence censors, the guy who shut down journalists right after the Revolution.

Even after moving to America, he was still getting 40 million Tomans (~$11,000) every month from Tehran, wired in foreign cash through a shady Ferdowsi Square exchange. His dad’s old colleague funneled another 30 million from every official check straight to Meysam’s family.

This is the same guy who helped pick Ghalibaf’s current top advisor, and who presents himself as “PhD in Media Psychology” from a U.S. university.

The slick propaganda style you have been seeing in his posts is not Ghalibaf. It’s Iranian regime’s ghostwriter in California.

The regime’s loudest voice is being run from the country it claims to hate.

Zamanabadi’s father was one of the founders of Iran’s Islamic Coalition Party and an intelligence officer who ran Iran’s censorship apparatus. So I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, with his son becoming a propagandist for Ghalibaf, rising in stature by riding on the coattails of a man known for using corruption to gain power. 

When Ghalibaf became Speaker of Parliament in 2020, IranWire published a report titled “Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s Footprints in Iranian Sports: Destruction and Corruption,” detailing the financial misconduct associated with him and his inner circle during his time as Police Chief and Mayor of Tehran. That report first named Meysam Zamanabadi as a pivotal advisor.

In 2003, while Ghalibaf was the head of the Law Enforcement Forces (FARAJA), he found a legal loophole to fund his ambitions at the Pas Sports Club. He funneled a portion of the national budget, specifically the “one percent allocation for cultural affairs and anti-drug efforts,” directly into the club. This resulted in the birth of two lavishly funded media outlets: the IPNA news agency and the Pas-e Javan newspaper.

Who ran this operation? A trio consisting of Meysam Zamanabadi, Mahmoud Abdollahi, and Saied Ajarlou (nephew of General Mostafa Ajarlou).

The Zamanabadi Legacy: Father and Son

Meysam is the son of Gholamhossein Zamanabadi, a man who claims to be one of the original members of the Islamic Coalition Party in the 1980s. While true, it is not the whole story.

Gholamhossein was among the first Ministry of Intelligence officers tasked with censoring journalists and social and sports writers after the Revolution. He is cited as the man responsible for the long-term purging of influential pre-revolutionary media figures like the late Ata’ollah Bahmanesh and Ardeshir Laroudi. During Mohammad Dadkan’s presidency of the Football Federation, Gholamhossein was the PR director in name, but a media watchdog in practice.

Leveraging his father’s influence, Meysam became the editor-in-chief of IPNA and Pas-e Javan in 2003, using the position to embed himself within Ghalibaf’s circle of trust.

That trust has paid off big. Zamanabadi is living in luxury in Glendora, California, and is now the social media guru who is the English-language spokesman for one of the most powerful men in Iran. 

WAR: Iran’s English-language propaganda operation is headquartered in Glendale, California. Meysam Zamanabadi has managed Iranian Parliament social media for years from US soil. He advises the Parliament Speaker directly. The Islamic Republic has been running its wartime… pic.twitter.com/qd7MYiqkGn

— @amuse (@amuse) April 13, 2026

Now it’s just possible that this propagandist remains in the United States because the administration wants to cut a deal with Ghalibaf, who is one of the top dogs negotiating with Vance and company. But that doesn’t answer the question of why he has been allowed to live in the United States for so long. 

Zamanabadi has lived in Glendora, a city in Los Angeles County, California, for nearly a decade. He presents himself as a “PhD graduate in Media Psychology” from an American university. In his biographies, he claims to have studied media psychology, media team training, the effects of digital media, social dynamics in the modern era, and the psychological impacts of contemporary communications on the new generation at U.S. institutions. These are the exact elements observed in the English tweets, memes, hashtags, and emojis used by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during the war with the United States.

Zamanabadi gets tens of thousands of dollars a month for doing this dirty work for the Iranian regime, which even in California affords you a rather nice life. And no doubt it is useful to have your propagandist embedded within the society you are working to bring down. 

2- Since Galibaf himself has no real command of the English language or the complexities of international politics and media, one of his long-time associates, Meisam Zamanabadi, has taken charge of managing his account and contents. pic.twitter.com/vpDMhJfLen

— Ehsan AriaN (@E_Aria_N) April 13, 2026

For some reason, the United States seems especially good at importing and welcoming its enemies. We welcome hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, host the children of our most dedicated enemies, and embed some of the very worst of them in our education system. 

5- Meisam is now a graduate in Media Psychology from Fielding Graduate University in California and primarily resides in Glendora, Los Angeles, and frequently travels to Iran.
He is considered one of the figures in managing and training Media-cyber teams. pic.twitter.com/ZFe8LbYKkE

— Ehsan AriaN (@E_Aria_N) April 13, 2026

It’s nuts. 

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