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4 months ago
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On 12 June 2025, dozens of anonymous X (formerly Twitter) accounts advocating Scottish independence abruptly went silent. Many had posted hundreds of times per week, often using pro-independence slogans, anti-UK messaging, and identity cues like “NHS nurse” or “Glaswegian socialist.”
Their sudden disappearance coincided with a major Israeli airstrike campaign against Iranian military and cyber infrastructure. Within days, Iran had suffered severe power outages, fuel shortages, and an internet blackout affecting 95 percent of national connectivity.
What appeared at first glance to be a curious coincidence has since emerged as the most visible rupture to date in a long-running foreign influence operation. This was spotted first by the following account.
Iranian bots haven’t posted for four days. Fiona, Where are ye noo? https://t.co/MrqUTX9wnB
— The Majority #AbolishHolyrood (@themajorityscot) June 16, 2025
And more recently.
“Jake”, “Fiona” and “Lucy” have been inactive since the 12 of July.
For such prolific pro-nationalist posters on the platform I don’t understand what happened to them all on the 12th of July?
Hmmmmm…. now what could have happened. pic.twitter.com/VJEc014b0b
— ScotFax (@scotfax) June 23, 2025
What emerges is a picture of a state actor, Tehran, deliberately using the Scottish independence issue to weaken its adversary by amplifying internal division.
“The timing, posting patterns, and network structure all point in one direction,” said Charles, a veteran open-source intelligence researcher who publishes under a pseudonym due to contractual restrictions.
“What we’re seeing is classic IRGC-linked activity: coordinated accounts posting at regular intervals, linguistic and thematic uniformity across profiles, and sudden synchronous silence. The kicker is infrastructure dependency. These accounts didn’t log off, they were cut off almost certainly because their command-and-control layer, likely hosted through Iranian VPN exit nodes or proxy managed access platforms, went down after the strikes. This kind of abrupt network wide halt is a textbook signature of an externalised influence operation losing its operational backend.”
Iranian objectives
Iran’s strategy is asymmetric. Lacking the economic leverage or conventional military reach of its Western adversaries, it has turned to covert online influence as a low-cost, high-impact tool for shaping perceptions and political fault lines abroad. Within this broader playbook, the UK has long been a target. Tehran sees Britain as a historic antagonist associated with colonial exploitation and perceived meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. Weakening the UK’s internal cohesion fits into Iran’s strategic objectives, and Scottish independence provides a compelling wedge issue.
An Iran-sponsored post promoting Iran… pic.twitter.com/e0JbTsiiIE
— The Majority #AbolishHolyrood (@themajorityscot) October 3, 2024
Iran’s involvement in Scottish political discourse began quietly.
In the lead-up to the 2014 independence referendum, IRIB created Facebook pages like “The Scotsman Cartoon” that published caricatures and memes portraying then-Prime Minister David Cameron as the face of English authoritarianism. These pages mimicked legitimate Scottish media outlets to gain traction. The reach was limited, and the campaign was not sustained beyond early 2014, but it laid the groundwork for future, more sophisticated efforts.
Press TV, Iran’s English-language propaganda outlet, openly framed Scotland’s desire for independence as an anti-imperialist struggle. Stories suggested that London was militarising Scottish territory to suppress secessionist sentiment. These narratives circulated in Iranian state media but saw limited impact in Scotland itself. Nonetheless, they demonstrated a clear thematic template: Scotland as oppressed, Westminster as colonial overlord, and independence as liberation.
Between 2022 and 2024, Iranian-linked online activity escalated significantly through a network of fake X accounts that promoted Scottish independence. Researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub identified more than 80 accounts posing as socially conscious British users. Many carried biographies such as “Ex NHS Nurse. Hopeful for a better future with a lot less inequality,” designed to appear credible to domestic audiences.
The Clemson team concluded that these accounts were likely operated by or on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Their objective appeared to be the amplification of domestic political tensions in the UK, particularly around constitutional issues. Since late 2021, the network produced around 250,000 tweets. These messages were not spam. They were designed to blend into genuine political discourse and engage real users.
The content mixed pro-independence rhetoric with populist criticism of the UK government, anti-monarchy sentiment, and solidarity with progressive causes. One tweet, which was viewed over a million times, stated, “the people robbing this country travel by private jet not by dinghy.” Another drew attention to Prince George receiving flying lessons at age 11, contrasting it with worsening poverty across the UK.
The volume of output was striking. According to Clemson’s analysis, the network was responsible for at least 4 percent of all Scottish independence-related discussion on X in early 2024. That was roughly four times more than the official SNP account over the same period. The researchers concluded that the network had become one of the most active sources of Scottish independence messaging on the platform, not out of genuine political alignment, but in pursuit of destabilisation.
The accounts were designed to be persuasive by appearing local, consistent, and emotionally resonant. Many used AI-generated profile pictures. Their language mimicked that of real users, and their timing matched major political news cycles. These tactics enabled what researchers call narrative laundering, where external influence is disguised within what appears to be organic public sentiment.
Professor Darren Linvill, one of the lead researchers on the project, said the goal was not necessarily to convince but to create the impression that support for independence was more widespread than it really was. “Anyone in sales will tell you the bandwagon fallacy is a powerful tool,” he said. This form of amplification does not have to shift public opinion directly to be effective. It simply reshapes the perceived size and momentum of a movement.
Real users frequently engaged with the network’s content. Tweets from these fake accounts received hundreds of thousands of retweets, likes, and comments. Many followers were unaware of the accounts’ origins. Over time, this helped create a feedback loop in which synthetic content was treated as legitimate, and fringe narratives gained disproportionate visibility.
Linvill and his co-author Patrick Warren noted that the campaign remained active for years before being publicly identified. They described it as more advanced and far-reaching than earlier Iranian operations. In terms of tradecraft, it demonstrated better language use, more consistent personas, and stronger alignment with polarising issues in UK politics.
Despite the exposure, many of the identified accounts remained online throughout 2024 and into 2025. Researchers criticised the lack of enforcement, particularly by X, which had significantly reduced its trust and safety operations. “Platforms and governments can and should be doing more,” Linvill said. “X, in particular, has stepped away from meaningful work to mitigate this type of activity, and the impact is clear.”
The Disruption
The abrupt and near-simultaneous disappearance of dozens of pro-independence accounts on 12 June 2025 occurred on the same day that Israel launched a series of coordinated air and cyber strikes on Iran. These attacks reportedly targeted infrastructure associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including facilities linked to electronic warfare and cyber operations.
Within 48 hours of the strike, large parts of Iran experienced rolling blackouts, fuel shortages, and telecommunications failures. Independent monitoring organisations such as NetBlocks confirmed that internet connectivity across Iran fell to less than five percent of normal levels by 14 June. This was one of the most severe network disruptions in Iran since the 2019 domestic unrest.
Accounts on X which had previously posted continuously and in synchronised fashion, abruptly stopped publishing content. The silence was total. Dozens of other accounts that displayed similar linguistic patterns, profile formatting, and follower behaviour also went dark within the same 24-hour window.
The pattern is difficult to explain through coincidence or user disengagement. There were no apparent warnings, no staggered exits, and no transitions to backup accounts. Instead, what occurred resembled the sudden severing of a command channel or backend system. This type of disruption is consistent with a centrally coordinated network that relies on remote infrastructure, whether physical servers, VPNs, or management dashboards, linked to the affected region.
The Israeli strikes, combined with Iranian-imposed internet shutdowns and physical damage to digital infrastructure, offer a plausible explanation for the sudden loss of activity. If these pro-independence accounts were in any way dependent on facilities or command centres in Iran, then the loss of electricity, bandwidth, or secure communications could have rendered them inoperable. This is especially likely if control was exercised not from within the accounts themselves but from a single point of orchestration, such as a control panel or team-based access system housed within IRGC-aligned facilities.
In short, the June 12 strike may not have revealed the network directly. It may simply have broken it.
Editor’s Note – This article does not claim that Scottish independence is a foreign plot, nor does it suggest that support for independence is illegitimate, inauthentic, or driven by anything other than sincere political conviction. The focus is not on genuine activists or grassroots communities, but on documented attempts by Iranian-linked actors to exploit real political movements in the UK for strategic advantage.
The reporting draws from multiple sources, including a 2024 report by Clemson University that identified over 80 fake X accounts linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These accounts posed as ordinary Britons while promoting pro-independence content. The “dozens” referenced in the article refers to a subset of those accounts that went silent on 12 June 2025 — coinciding with Israeli strikes on Iranian military and communications infrastructure. The article names three accounts for illustrative purposes, but it also indirectly links to a wider dataset of related accounts via the sources cited.
Importantly, the article does not equate support for independence with foreign manipulation. Rather, it highlights how state actors — in this case, Iran — often mimic the language and cultural markers of existing political groups in order to infiltrate and distort online debate. This includes crafting fake personas aligned with left-wing or anti-imperialist sentiment, not to persuade, but to amplify and launder their own narratives through credible channels. All claims made are supported by platform takedown records, academic research, and publicly verifiable account activity. Readers are encouraged to engage with the primary sources linked throughout the article.
