Iran security chief warns of Epstein network false flag plot

"ALAli Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, posted a warning on X on March 15, 2026: 'I've heard that the remaining members of Epstein's network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9/11 and blame Iran for it.' He added: 'Iran fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes and has no war with the American people.' The post went up on Day 16 of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which began on February 28 with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.\n\nThe claim spread quickly across social media and was reported by outlets including Iran International, Middle East Monitor, Al Jazeera, and dozens of regional and South Asian news organizations. No independent evidence confirmed any such plot. No intelligence agency or government authority issued any warning corroborating it. The U.S. government did not respond to the specific claim."

"Larijani was not a peripheral figure. He was the most powerful surviving official of the Islamic Republic when he made the statement. Khamenei had been killed on February 28, along with several other senior figures. Larijani, a former IRGC officer, ex-speaker of Iran's parliament (2008-2020), and former chief nuclear negotiator who helped finalize the 2015 JCPOA, was widely considered Iran's from roughly December 2025 onward.\n\nHe had been reappointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in 2025, a post he previously held from 2005 to 2007. The SNSC coordinates Iran's national security policy across military strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy, and reports directly to the Supreme Leader. With Khamenei gone, Larijani's public statements carried the weight of institutional authority over Iran's wartime decisions."

"Larijani named 'the Epstein network' as the alleged perpetrator. In March 2026, the Epstein files had been a source of bipartisan political controversy in the U.S. for months, involving contested document releases, congressional subpoenas, accusations of DOJ cover-ups, and allegations touching figures across the political spectrum. Iran's choice of this framing appeared designed to tap into existing American distrust rather than present verifiable intelligence.\n\nFraming the threat as the work of a shadowy, culturally resonant network that large segments of both the American left and right already viewed with suspicion increased the odds the claim would be picked up by U.S. domestic audiences. had previously been documented using similar tactics: impersonating American activists, running fake news websites, and seeding claims designed to exploit existing political divisions."

"Larijani's March 15 warning was the most prominent instance of a false-flag narrative Iranian officials had been building for weeks. had raised the same theme earlier in March, after the public release of an FBI bulletin describing 'unverified information' that Iran had 'aspired' to conduct a surprise drone attack on targets in 🌴California using UAVs from an unidentified offshore vessel. Baghaei posted on X: 'Is this a prelude to another false flag incident?'\n\nBaghaei also pointed out that Iranian drones cannot physically reach California from the Gulf, roughly 6,500 miles away, and questioned why U.S. officials were circulating what the FBI itself described as unverified. The FBI bulletin stated agents had 'no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators.' White House press secretary KLKaroline Leavitt called the ABC News report that disclosed the bulletin 'false information' and said it should be 'immediately retracted.'"

"Iran's military command pushed a related accusation separately. The spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters accused the United States and Israel of striking Gulf Cooperation Council countries with drones modeled on Iran's Shahed-136, which the spokesperson said had been rebranded as a system called LUCAS, to simulate Iranian attacks and justify drawing more regional actors into the conflict. Iran's Foreign Minister AAAbbas Araghchi publicly attributed strikes on Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan to Israeli false-flag operations.\n\nThe Larijani post, the Baghaei 🌴California response, and the Khatam al-Anbiya accusations together formed a to preemptively deny responsibility for any future attack attributed to Iran and to sow doubt about the credibility of U.S. government accounts of the war."

"The disinformation environment of the Iran war helped Larijani's claim travel fast. Within minutes of Trump's initial announcement that U.S. and Israeli forces had struck Iran, fabricated content spread across X, including false footage, invented casualty figures, and manipulated imagery. Under Elon Musk's ownership, the platform had repeatedly been criticized for reducing content moderation during breaking international news events.\n\nLarijani's post benefited because it came from an official Iranian government account rather than an anonymous source, which made it look more credible than typical disinformation. The Epstein framing gave it a hook that resonated with audiences who already viewed the Epstein affair as evidence of hidden elite networks. Outlets across the ideological spectrum amplified the claim without independent verification."

"No government or intelligence agency has publicly addressed whether Larijani had any actual intelligence behind the claim. His track record as a nuclear negotiator, SNSC secretary, and wartime decision-maker pointed to a deliberate communicator, not a reckless one. On Day 16 of the war, with Iran's command structure degraded and the U.S. domestic environment fractured over the Epstein files and skeptical of official accounts, the claim was well-suited to the audience it was trying to reach. Whether the March 15 post reflected genuine intelligence, deterrence messaging, or psychological operations remains unknown."

"Kirby and Leavitt both issued statements in the March 12-15 period pushing back against what they described as Iranian disinformation about U.S. military operations, though neither addressed Larijani's Epstein claim directly. The State Department noted that Iran had a documented history of influence operations targeting American audiences, citing prior indictments of Iranian operatives for targeting U.S. election infrastructure.\n\nThe volume and variety of Iranian claims in this period made them hard to track: some were verifiable, some were false, and some couldn't be checked at all. That mix is the point. By the time one claim gets fact-checked, two more have already spread. No one has established whether Larijani had actual intelligence, was passing along something he'd heard, or was putting a message out there that he knew would travel."