Iran Spreading Propaganda on Chinese TikTok

Iran is using the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin – owned by the same Beijing-based company, ByteDance – to spread propaganda about the war between Hamas and Israel.

Newsweek first reported on the development Monday, noting that the Iranian Embassy in China’s account expressed sympathy toward the terrorist group Hamas and its infamous Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.

The account also blamed the United States and Israel for the ensuing war, which aims to eliminate Hamas’ control over the Gaza Strip. The region is only nominally administrated by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Since the beginning of the conflict, the short and curated videos of destroyed buildings in Gaza have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, with others explicitly calling Israel a “terrorist” nation.

The embassy even shared footage of the aftermath of an explosion at the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, blaming Israel for the destruction.

United States intelligence currently believes it resulted from a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, a terrorist group closely aligned with Hamas.

Another Iranian post on Douyin shows rockets falling on Gaza popping out from the hair of an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish person.

Chinese state media outlets have also reposted and amplified the Iranian embassy’s claims on the social media platform Sina Weibo. The combined effort has led to the embassy gaining over 1.3 million followers on Douyin.

Beijing, which has strong political and trade ties with Iran, has attempted to portray itself as a global peace broker in the Middle East conflict.

However, the country has yet to explicitly condemn Hamas, which The Wall Street Journal reported as being funded and orchestrated by Iran, for starting the crisis.