The Iranian regime is confronting an unprecedented American pressure campaign. For the first time since 1979, an economic campaign in the form of a US naval blockade and punishing sanctions coupled with military losses after Operation Epic Fury are squeezing Tehran. There are additional avenues that the US government and its allies can use to further punish the Islamic Republic: by launching a diplomatic isolation campaign called Operation Diplomatic Outcast and countering the Iranian regime’s information warfare.
President Trump’s economic strangulation of Iran is depriving it of revenues, fuel, and sharpening the choices for the regime’s elite. Since 2025, his military campaign against the Islamic Republic has degraded the full spectrum of its capabilities – its nuclear programme, drone and missile arsenals, its terrorism apparatus, its militia network, defence industrial base, and economic sectors critical to financial infusions. None of this would have been possible with diplomacy, as the Iranian regime refuses to negotiate over many of these files while offering token concessions on its nuclear programme.
Two areas where the US government and its allies have not traditionally invested much political capital in is diplomatic isolation of the Iranian regime and combatting its information warfare activities. Diplomatically, the Iranian regime has historically been very sensitive over its perceived legitimacy on the world stage. It has used international fora to engage in malign influence operations meant to divide the United States and its allies from within, shatter international coalitions mobilising against it, and propagandise against its adversaries. At home, it uses the reception it receives in foreign capitals to create the impression that the regime is stable, secure, accepted, and that it is not going anywhere, attempting to demoralise the Iranian people in the process.
The United States should in turn form a coalition of countries who are prepared to take steps to further isolate the Iranian regime. Given that the US government does not have official diplomatic relations with Tehran, this will make the United Nations as a centre of gravity for this campaign. Already, the Trump administration was reportedly involved in blocking the attendance of Iran’s Vice President and head of its Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami from participating in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference in Vienna in September as Eslami is under UN sanctions.
The Trump administration should similarly deny visas to the Iranian president, foreign minister, or other senior officials Tehran wants to dispatch to the opening of the UN General Assembly later this month. Despite the US government retaining a UN Host Agreement for its headquarters in New York, the United States maintains the sovereign right to deny such visas on security, terrorism, and foreign policy grounds. The Iranian regime’s behaviour clearly meets that standard, as it has engaged in multiple terror plots on US soil and is in violation of UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCR), like UNSCR 2817. Walkouts during any speeches by Iranian representatives should be organised if they are present.
The coalition should also use the ouster of Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2022 as a template to remove it from or prevent its ascension to other UN bodies on which it serves in leadership roles.
Washington could also encourage its allies and partners to downgrade their diplomatic ties with the Iranian regime. This would include declaring discrete Iranian diplomatic personnel personae non gratae, closing Iranian consulates, and other regime infrastructure in these countries. Peru announced its intention to sever diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, citing its attacks on international trade and suppression of protests. The Trump administration should encourage other countries around the world to adopt similar measures to further isolate Tehran. The point of these restrictions is to telegraph to the Iranian regime that it will not be business as usual so long as its terroristic ways continue.
Additionally, the US government and its allies should robustly combat the Islamic Republic’s information warfare. There have traditionally been three prongs to the Iranian regime’s influence operations: use of its Foreign Ministry to inject regime-friendly narratives into Western academic, media, political, and policy circles and use of its Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization to spread disinformation and amplify anti-American content online.
While freedom of speech and freedom of the press are enshrined in the West, authoritarian states like the Islamic Republic seek to exploit that very freedom which they deny to their own citizens. The best way to thwart these attempts is for the Trump administration to declassify Iranian regime information warfare and influence campaigns that are ongoing against the United States and its allies. In July 2024, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a public statement, warning about Iran’s increasingly aggressive foreign influence campaigns, going as far as providing financial support to protesters against Israel. The US government and its allies today may consider issuing a similar guidance, outlining tactics it has observed the Iranian regime employ to demoralise and disinform the public.
Likewise, Western governments should work with social media companies, especially X, to disable state-backed sock puppet accounts which are posing as open-source intelligence service providers or news outlets and put up more guardrails around artificial intelligence. Anthropic recently accused Iran-aligned actors of using its products to run influence operations in the form of cognitive warfare to shape public opinion.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has increasingly been using its own embassy accounts from around the world to engage in these influence operations. They too should be disabled, as they are not advancing relations between the Islamic Republic and the country in which it has an embassy. They are acting as arms of the Iranian regime’s information warfare apparatus and contrary to the interests of the countries in which they are based.
According to one study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, “posts by Iranian diplomatic and official X accounts collectively gained hundreds of millions of views throughout the first 50 days of the conflict. When comparing the 50 days before and after the war began, those accounts nearly quadrupled their number of posts, from roughly 10,500 to 40,000.” In essence, the Iranian regime is weaponising X to advance its own malign interests under diplomatic cover while officially banning the platform for its own people.
The US government and its allies should also sanction Explosive Media, which has been producing Lego-themed videos in service of the Iranian regime’s propaganda that have gone viral on social media. US allies have assessed it serves as an arm of certain factions in the Islamic Republic. The videos contain death threats against American citizens and count as incitement.
Lastly, Washington should revoke existing sanctions waivers in place for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) that allows it to operate.
In the end, economic warfare and kinetic operations are only two tools in the governmental toolkit. More attention should be directed at the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic breathing room and information warfare.
Jason M. Brodsky is the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)
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