Al-Fassel (Arabic) and Pishtaz News (Farsi) are Pentagon-funded propaganda outlets disguised as independent news sites, connected to CENTCOM’s Trans-Regional Web Initiative psyop network.
Key Takeaways
Technical fingerprints link both sites to the TRWI lineage: identical URL structure, 404 error graphics, thumbs-up/down polls, and en_GB URL markers shared with Salaam Times and CENTCOMcitadel.com.
SOCOM launched TRWI in 2008 via a General Dynamics IT contract; Congress defunded it in 2014, but sites rebranded rather than shutting down, per the 2022 Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika report.
State-media disclosure is buried in an About page only, absent from Instagram and X, violating platform policy on state-backed media labeling.
Pishtaz News follows only three accounts on X, two of which are official CENTCOM Farsi and Arabic handles; its Instagram follows only “US CENTCOM FARSI.”
At least one Al-Fassel YouTube anchor was flagged as AI-generated by Georgetown deepfake researcher Sejin Paik and Witness synthetic media researcher Zuzanna Wojciak, citing absent eye blinks and skin/hand anomalies.
Hacker News Comment Review
No substantive HN discussion yet; the single comment asks for recommended independent Middle East news sources rather than engaging with the investigation’s findings.
