Iran Regime Change Tout Spews NSFW, Misogynistic Abuse When Asked Merely to Stop Spamming

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1. resilc February 17, 2026 at 9:10 am

   I don’t think people in general appreciate the massive amount of work required to keep NC rolling. And that’s without any abuse……my hat’s off to ya.
   1. mrsyk February 17, 2026 at 10:09 am

      Mine as well. Many, many thanks to you and the team.
   2. Ben Panga February 17, 2026 at 10:43 am

      Me too, I love this site often reflect how much care and work Yves (and others) put in.

      My toxic trait is enjoying when trolls or fools try to argue back at Yves in the comments. I know they are about to get blown up, but surgically. Do not fight the lioness!
   3. Kevin Smith February 17, 2026 at 3:14 pm

      I’m inspired to send NC another USD100. Keep up the good work!
2. jj February 17, 2026 at 9:31 am

   Free media exposure for NC?
3. raspberry jam February 17, 2026 at 9:32 am

   You can tell by the way this person interacts that they’re under 40 (probably under 35) and “internet poisoned”, they’ve spent years (decades probably) doing flame war/forum bombing/digital influence operations (that’s the trigger response to a perceived slight and immediate shift to insults and doubling down).

   I’ve come to view this stuff and quite a lot of the non-direct command operations as forms of patronage networks. These are groups of people who have a core of technical specialists who can do the bot setups and automation/repetition work but they still need some humans with the ability/willingness to sit for 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week, on paid campaigns for the paid topic at hand to respond to humans who interact or take the bait. The patron is the person who contracts the deal with whoever wants the influence operation and pays for the team of technicals and grunts to run the campaign. One week it’s women in games journalism, next week it’s trans athletics, after that it’s the color revolution of the week. Huge amounts of political campaign donations (and probably actual government money under Trump and Netanyahu) pay for this. Wash, rinse, repeat.

   I don’t know if it’s good or bad that they’re not ideologues. I think it’s probably good that most of this isn’t “real”. I think a lot of people haven’t fully accepted the degree to which just how much of this is wholly fabricated, though.

   You’re a class act, Yves. Good on you for not letting these losers shake you!
   1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 10:13 am

      Oh, this discussion of the sociology and probable organization was very helpful. The only people I know who are activists even if youngish (like my tech woman who has been one of the top organizers of biggish marches in NYC) are professionals and know how to comport themselves. They are also very attentive to the need of participants to present the movement well. That is why I found this vitriol so surprising…did he not get that he was tarnishing the effort? But you made that make sense, that there are lots of hired hands.
      1. GF February 17, 2026 at 1:27 pm

         Yves, what are the pros and cons for publishing Ms Raat’s email address?
         1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:16 pm

            I decided not to even though he had authorized that by approving the publication of his messages. Even though technically it’s OK, it struck me at too close in spirit to looking like my aim was to let/encourage others to go after him, as in harass him via e-mail. I did not want to look like I was trying to make that happen, much the less have that happen. IMHO the publication of his name, whether actually his or not, was more than sufficient in the “name and shame” category.
   2. .Tom February 17, 2026 at 10:41 am

      That Brett Raad wrote “You’re clearly one of those Ayatollah-loving, Hamas-supporting pieces of trash — typical shitty liberal.” suggests he is interested in the subject matter. The vile language suggests he isn’t worried about losing a job as email campaigner. The technically idiotic methods (huge To: lists) suggests no skill in email campaign work.

      All in all I got the impression of someone unhinged and raving.
      1. johnherbiehancock February 17, 2026 at 11:11 am

         All in all I got the impression of someone unhinged and raving.

         There seems to be more and more of that going around these days.

         I imagine it’s some combination of stress from out-of-control personal debt amidst ever-accelerating costs & stagnant wages, COVID brain damage overriding what little judgment they had, general existential dread due to climate change (regardless of whether they deny it or not), and them aping how the current presidential administration behaves. Monkey see, monkey do.
         1. Hickory February 17, 2026 at 11:55 am

            Also being in media silos. I doubt that person learns the kind of thing we discuss here at NC.
      2. morongobill February 17, 2026 at 12:16 pm

         My impression is he better watch who he spouts off to face to face, or else he might have to pick his teeth up from the floor.
      3. bertl February 17, 2026 at 8:57 pm

         If it’s not Pam Bondi in trans mode, I would assume that it is either a false flag pro-regime propagandist or a Democratic operative firming up the vote for the mid-sessional. If the latter, s/he’s doing an excellent job.
   3. PlutoniumKun February 17, 2026 at 11:12 am

      Things may have changed, but a while back I was doing a deep dive into astroturfing in various forms, and a constant for the PR professionals was to always hold their cool and keep the high ground. When someone loses it, as in the above, its usually a sign that this is an informal hasbara/wumao type operation, or whatever the Iranian expat equivalent is – i.e. an informal army of supporters who are encouraged to join in (with supplied talking points) on given topics. Mostly they are not paid, they are just encouraged to think they are part of the good fight. The advantage is that they can’t be blocked as easily as bots and can seem more ‘organic’, the disadvantage is that they can go off-piste, as this guy proves.

      Having followed a few of these discourses, I think there are overlapping right wing groups (often competing) who have armies of supporters on call to do pile-ins. Some of the organisers no doubt profit from this, but the regular keyboard army volunteers don’t get anything. The informality of the links makes it harder to identify and block them.

      The flip side is that its not unknown for these groups to recruit spammers who pose as ‘supporters’ of a particular movement, and then gradually behave in a noxious manner to poison the well. This is particularly common with astroturfing Green groups. You should never assume anything with these things. Just block people who behave in an objectionable manner, no matter what side they claim to support.
      1. raspberry jam February 17, 2026 at 2:47 pm

         When someone loses it, as in the above, its usually a sign that this is an informal hasbara/wumao type operation, or whatever the Iranian expat equivalent is – i.e. an informal army of supporters who are encouraged to join in (with supplied talking points) on given topics. Mostly they are not paid, they are just encouraged to think they are part of the good fight.

         Oh, this is a really good point. I think about this more from the higher level (purchaser of services, patron + patron team) where the money is actually being exchanged but you are correct that further down the chain there are often teams of unpaid volunteers who are working because they think they’re part of the good guys.

         I think there are overlapping right wing groups (often competing) who have armies of supporters on call to do pile-ins.

         Yes, this is a thing, but I think even if they have supporters on call only some of them, and only for a while, will do it for free (or be manipulated to work for free on basis of ideology or whatever – as I understand it at least originally a lot of these teams were recruited out of online gaming communities and forum boards). A lot of Bitcoin is used for the payment! I’ve only heard stories about the hasbara side of the operations (think: getting financially weak celebrities to defend Israel publicly – heard a very funny story about a certain C- tier musician arguing with her handler about getting more money to keep doing the work), so these would be ultimately directed from actual government policy, but even in the US we have Brad Parscale’s operation which is engaged in the same thing but for the Trump regime talking points. And of course there was the NAFO stuff early to mid Ukraine war. The patrons of these groups can then point to their successes when pitching to a new buyer – it’s just another business for them.
   4. Carolinian February 17, 2026 at 3:05 pm

      Or under 12?

      The quick trigger on the sexual insults suggests maturity may still be years away.
4. ambrit February 17, 2026 at 9:34 am

   Ah, this is a step above my garden variety “see my naughty photos” spam mail.
   I fear clicking on any link in suspicious e-mails due to the presence of “phaque” unsubscribe links that cover for trojan horse operations. It can get cumbersome, but I list e-mails I do not desire as spam when needed. I then block the senders in the spam mail screen.
   I get the feeling that you, as a public figure, get a magnitude more of spam mail than the average internet user. Are there enough hours in your day for this?
   Another thought that occurred to me was that could this be an example of a “Nasty Bot” program? Roughly, an AI, (Aspirational Intelligence) designed to psychologically damage the receivers of said messaging through repeated exposure to ‘negative vibes.’ As psychology research has shown, repeated exposure to such negative messaging slowly convinces the recipient of the validity and “truth” of the underlying negative self-image. Pavlovian Conditioning via the Internet.
   Stay safe, strong, and fearless.
   1. vao February 17, 2026 at 10:16 am

      “I fear clicking on any link in suspicious e-mails due to the presence of “phaque” unsubscribe links that cover for trojan horse operations.”

      That is what I thought too.

      Messages that reveal the list of recipients, call for participation after the events have passed, repeat the same message from different senders, and are managed by foulmouthed people: this is the kind of harassment, rushed work, and invectives reminiscent of what happens with those fake “Windows support”, “Internet security support”, and “blockchain support” scam calls operated from India. You can find on the Internet recordings of such sessions where the callers resort to outright insults when the interaction does not go according to their wishes.

      I would therefore not be surprised that such spam received by Yves includes links that, when clicked, install ransomware, or a bitcoin-mining parasit, or some other kind of nefarious program.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 10:22 am

         There were no links in this. It was intended to be a one-way message.

         You underestimate how many amateurs there are out there trying to promote their business or cause via e-mail.
   2. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 10:19 am

      I get about 1000 e-mails a day. A lot are spam. The phishing and “selling irrelevant /unwanted products and services” ones are easy to ignore. It’s ones with news related content that can get my attention.

      A lot of this is due to being a publisher, but some is also due to my Internet age. I got my first e-mail account in 1992. As one of my tech buddies said, “Span is like STDs. The more you’ve gotten around, the more you have.”
      1. boots February 17, 2026 at 2:06 pm

         This spam sounds very human to me, but I wonder what proportion of your spam is now AI generated?

         In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone.

         This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up.

         This is happening everywhere. Newspapers are being inundated by AI-generated letters to the editor, as are academic journals. Lawmakers are inundated with AI-generated constituent comments. Courts around the world are flooded with AI-generated filings, particularly by people representing themselves. AI conferences are flooded with AI-generated research papers. Social media is flooded with AI posts. In music, open source software, education, investigative journalism and hiring, it’s the same story.

         Like Clarkesworld’s initial response, some of these institutions shut down their submissions processes. Others have met the offensive of AI inputs with some defensive response, often involving a counteracting use of AI.

         … These are all arms races…

         Source: AI-generated text is overwhelming institutions (all examples are links to receipts in original)

         In some cases, AI-generated text is getting nasty and personal, like AI agent “crabby-rathbun’s” blackmail comments and blogpost directed at the maintainer of matplotlib.

         I’m amazed at NC’s ability to keep the commentariat focused on effective thinking about current events.
      2. gk February 17, 2026 at 4:07 pm

         I got mine in 1980 without your problems. But people behaved differently back then.
5. Ignacio February 17, 2026 at 9:40 am

   Oh! How “well” educated this Brett! Good sign that all he wants is the best for his “fellow” Persians. Almost certainly he want’s them fu%&ed.
6. motorslug February 17, 2026 at 9:45 am

   Was the entire exchange you posted set to ‘reply all’ originally? That would be a thing of beauty for all of those addresses to witness his juvenile misogyny first hand!

   Has anyone ever heard about or know of any spammer anywhere actually being fined or bankrupted for those violations? I have not and think it is a toothless law.
   1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 9:50 am

      All the e-mail addresses were exposed in the cc: field, so yes, if you hit “reply all” any response would go to the full list. Needless to say, I was tempted to do that in the, erm, discussion with Raad.

      The FCC could in theory wake up any day and decide to enforce. Think of all the lovely fines to bring in revenue if the Supreme Court nixes Trump tariffs!

      But in all seriousness, any remotely grown up operation that sends out e-mail in bulk complies, because not doing so says you are a clown show and/or jerks.
      1. Janeway February 17, 2026 at 6:52 pm

         BCC is there for a reason, and not using it for spam like this demonstrates something about the sender. Not good, for sure.
7. Vicky Cookies February 17, 2026 at 9:46 am

   How unpleasant, I’m sorry you experienced that. Thank you, Yves, for your work, your doggedness, and for your commitment to your priorities. I don’t think Mr. Raad would’ve expected a published summary of the exchange complete with footnotes. People ought to look into your decorated background before pulling crap like this.
8. Zephyrum February 17, 2026 at 9:51 am

   Wow, that is remarkably unhinged. Yves, thanks for providing such a nice sanctuary here–and for defending it.
9. motorslug February 17, 2026 at 9:58 am

   A bit of levity, if I may:

   I get 10 of those ‘grow your member’ spam emails every day.
   8 of them are from my girlfriend.
   It’s the 2 from my mom that really hurt.
   – Jimmy Carr
   1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 10:23 am

      :-)
   2. David in Friday Harbor February 17, 2026 at 12:29 pm

      This struck my funny-bone as well! Why is it that these incel types can’t understand the subtleties of common insults?

      An invitation for another person to perform fellatio is only an insult when made between hetero- males! It is then an accusation of perversion. Fellatio performed between consenting homo- or hetero- couples is a deeply connecting act of physical intimacy that is hardly an insult. However, an apparent incel like this clown is incapable of understanding such a nuance.

      For some reason I was reminded of a bumper sticker that was making the rounds about 30 years back: MEAN PEOPLE SUCK. NICE PEOPLE SWALLOW.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 1:23 pm

         In general, when a man gratuitously mentions his equipment, and worse to try to present himself as potent, it means he’s seriously inadequate.
         1. Alex Cox February 17, 2026 at 9:36 pm

            Good lord, Yves, I am so sorry you have to, even briefly, consider such imbecilities.
      2. Bernard February 19, 2026 at 12:07 pm

         I actually had that bumper sticker
10. .Tom February 17, 2026 at 10:14 am

    Yves wrote: “I am sure my readers will too.”

    I did. Thanks for sharing. Oh my! When someone resorts to that type of argumentation you know they have nothing else to work with.
11. Mark Gisleson February 17, 2026 at 10:15 am

    Just once I sent out a spam where I hit CC instead of BCC.

    It’s very embarrassing to have a public radio reporter let you know that you just shared your entire list of political contacts with them.

    Seems like it would be very easy for Gmail to route all BCC mail to a special spam folder or to at least flag BCC emails which are every bit as annoying as spam from a first name only account which turns out to be spam from a company using a nonidentifying email address.
12. Es s Ce Tera February 17, 2026 at 10:35 am

    I agree the response is very revealing and not only gives us a) the person is western, b) of a particular political persuasion, c) has a very particular view of women, d) by the very rudeness (and disregard for general humanity as well as laws) we can likely narrow down the culture – and it’s not Iranian.

    I would even go so far as to say in my view no Iranian, pro or anti-Shah, would ever respond in this fashion. Good catch, Yves, even if unintentional.
13. ChiGal February 17, 2026 at 10:57 am

    ugh, what a troll. but perhaps he has been assured he is immune from prosecution for anything done in service to the cause.
    or perhaps he is an incel…
14. moishe pipik February 17, 2026 at 11:04 am

    is it possible your “interlocutor” was an AI run amok? i recently read a curious story wherein a software engineer rejected some code created by AI and received hostile and insulting responses in return.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:23 am

       No. AI content is much better written.
15. JonnyJames February 17, 2026 at 11:12 am

    I know Yves must have thick skin, but I am still sorry to see this abuse. It will undoubtedly open someone’s eyes. They doth protest a bit too much to just a request to stop spamming.

    Unwarranted, unhinged, puerile, misogynistic abuse. Sad, pathetic, but not surprising. This dude and his ilk are sadistic sociopaths. I guess if you support genocide, mass murder, bombing innocent people etc. that would qualify one as a sadist sociopath. People like this, and say Lindsey Graham, are also pathetic cowards. They ask for others to die til the last drop of blood, while they are protected and safe. Not to be too crude, but maybe a deep-seated sense of physical inadequacy and/or impotency plays into this. The intellectual and emotional inadequacy is clear, however.
    1. chris February 17, 2026 at 12:06 pm

       I agree. What a nasty thing to deal with. Our host shows her class everyday.

       Trolls are brave in their caves behind their keyboards. That’s why I still love this ad :)

       Paddy Power – Boxer KOs internet troll
       1. JonnyJames February 17, 2026 at 12:46 pm

          Yes indeed. Cheers for the funny clip chris. LOL, now there’s a “good lad!”
       2. mrsyk February 17, 2026 at 4:02 pm

          I don’t follow mma, but I do know that Paddy has a reputation for being cool. Thanks for the video.
16. shagggz February 17, 2026 at 11:51 am

    That eggplant emoji suggested there is a pretty gross sexual subtext to this troll’s flames too…
    1. ambrit February 17, 2026 at 1:32 pm

       It instantly reminded me of the “potency potion” described in the “Privy Journal of Capt. John Smith” from John Barth’s “The Sot-Weed Factor.” An eggplant figures prominently in that.
17. Lefty Godot February 17, 2026 at 11:56 am

    He’s sleepy and you’re not worth staying up for at 3:15 PM? Is that US Eastern time or Thai time? If it’s US, that plus the name makes me wonder if this person is operating from the Netherlands. If it’s Thai time, then that would be 3:15 AM for a spammer on the US east coast, which is way past most people’s “sleepy” time. So that maybe puts him on the west coast? Well! I’m sorry you’re exposed to this type of vile idiocy. My impression is half the people in Congress now talk like this at times, and it doesn’t map to party very closely either. The coarsening of public discourse now into childish retorts and obscene epithets is very striking to those of us who were around 50 years ago, when little bits of this bad behavior started being celebrated as “‘daring” and “transgressive” (and even, according to some, “more honest”).
    1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 12:51 pm

       No, all my time. So assuming he is in LA, it would be 0:15.
    2. elkern February 17, 2026 at 6:57 pm

       First page of Goog search on that name has resumes for a Graphic Designer who seems proud of having worked for FOX Broadcasting, located in SoCal – which is consistent with your analysis of the time-stamp. Also Instagram pic with comments in Arabic script under names which could be Persian.

       Assuming this *is* the guy writing the emails in the OP, the hubris of using his real name is also consistent with the content of those emails…
18. Rabbit February 17, 2026 at 1:59 pm

    Eves has one of the best minds out there. Sometimes she makes me feel dumb and I’m anything but.
    Little people, little minds. The good thing is when he’s badgering Eves, someone else is getting a break.
    The guy should be ignored. By responding you validate him.
    I pay for e-mail which lets me block people. It cost about 10 bucks a month.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:12 pm

       Thanks for the kind words. But I can block e-mails. The issue here was this pro-son-of-the-Shah group used different addresses for sending messages almost every time. So they can keep relentlessly spamming.

       However, this post may have worked. They sent yet another spam message, with as before a list of media org and writer addresses as before. I sent a reply all with a link to this post. No messages from them since that.
19. ChrisFromGA February 17, 2026 at 2:03 pm

    I find the most hilarious part of this story is how it exposes the “Iran regime change advocates” as likely CIA patsies, sitting in Mom’s basement, maybe earning a few bucks while unemployed and gaming all day.

    Not a very flattering picture. Real Iranians would never communicate like that.
    1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 18, 2026 at 4:09 am

       Oh, one line of thought I did not work into the post: was the rank amateurism the result of the cuts to USAID funding, which has hurt a lot of NGOs? Even though many of the rallies were in the US, a big one, where Pahlavi spoke, was in Munich. Any overseas operation in the old days could be presumed to have a USAID/National Endowment for Democracy tie-in. A salting of supervising adults would have greatly reduced the clown-show quality of this campaign.
       1. hk February 18, 2026 at 4:42 am

          That’s an interesting observation. My initial reaction was that, surely, a “serious” info op by intel agencies could draw in money and expertise from elsewhere, but then thought they would not be writing spam emails. A lot of “professional useful idiots,” who form a resource that can be exploited by intel agencies when needed against the “usual suspects,” but not necessarily under direct control of such agencies (and may not even be aware that they are spooky tools) might undeed have gotten rid of when USAID funding got cut indeed.
       2. Skip Intro February 18, 2026 at 10:13 am

          A related explanation would be a lack of ready qualified flacks due to a huge influx of cash and a rush to get out a big volume of billable communications and no time to hire or vet anyone. Could speak to desperation, overkill, or loss of skills at USAID.
20. Glen February 17, 2026 at 2:16 pm

    I was going to comment in other Iran articles that compared to the Bush WH efforts for the Iraq invasion, the Trump WH efforts, MSM push, et al, for this Iran war have been pretty pathetic, but I’m not the recipient of such convincing emails!

    I think if I did walk around town and ask random people about going to war with Iran the overwhelming answer would be along the lines of “this is stupid”, and I’m in a county with a huge military footprint.
21. ChrisPacific February 17, 2026 at 2:59 pm

    Sadly I don’t think this is particularly newsworthy in this day and age, as a lot of social media feeds are filled up with exactly this kind of thing, up to and including advocacy of sexual violence (AOC is a popular target, but by no means the only one).

    I’m not on social media much, but I know people who have had to block formerly-sane friends and even family members.
22. Glenn Turner February 17, 2026 at 3:12 pm

    You go for it, Ives.
    I love the way you can knock down straw-men arguments and idiots like this one. It made me smile. Thanks for all you do. This is my go-to place for my morning coffee.
23. B24S February 17, 2026 at 4:30 pm

    So sorry, but my wife and I did have a good laugh.

    Regarding Iranians in the US, we live in a part of California that had a large influx of Iranian “refugees” in the early 80s, for some reason, and some of them pine for the days of yore, if you will. Their offspring are very much American, and sound like it as well.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my friend Massoud, but in the days when we waited for the knock on the door, he used to tell me tales of SAVAK.
24. Steven A February 17, 2026 at 5:39 pm

    Thank you for sharing that with us. It appears to me that he disengaged before you did, so I am guessing you won. I would have replied to each of his rants with “Thank you for your input” until he disappeared.
25. Socal Rhino February 17, 2026 at 6:03 pm

    These spam messages were so bad, I momentarily wondered if they might be a psyop from supporters of the Iranian Republican seeking to discredit the would-be monarchy restorationists.
26. The Rev Kev February 17, 2026 at 6:04 pm

    Some people, like this guy, are just a waste of 1s and 0s. You block them when you realize what they are all about.
27. ocypode February 17, 2026 at 7:14 pm

    Are they putting something in the water in the US? Are the fabled fluorides from Dr. Strangelove a real threat? What else could possibly drive such psychopathy? Seriously though, crazy freak behavior on his part. It really doesn’t seem like a professional op, just some rando who decided to pick a fight.
28. Candide February 17, 2026 at 7:54 pm

    Regardless of the exact exemplar, NYT and similar comment sections, but NOT the well defended comments on NC, are often hijacked by aggressive types justifying the underlying themes the Congress embraces, with content intended to drive rational writers away. The time-tested “fart in the elevator” tactic.
29. playon February 17, 2026 at 9:17 pm

    Wow – Good on ya Yves!
30. everydayjoe February 18, 2026 at 1:53 am

    Netanyahu and his fellow war mongerers in USA are almost crying like a toddler when they dont get to bomb and kill Iranians. They are hysterical and angry at the Iranians for wanting to defend themselves. How dare they! We have a god given right to kill you is their argument. The same hysteria was present during Iraq war 2. But Iran is more formidable it seems and this gives Trump and his zionist bosses pause. The nastry response to Yve is their more vile evil self exposed for all to see.
    1. Candide February 18, 2026 at 7:39 am

       Everydayjoe’s phrasing and description is beautifully quotable for other less informed venues that we may find.
31. Trees&Trunks February 18, 2026 at 6:41 am

    One of the recipients in the cc is a certain “jepstein@insider.com”. Is this THE insider Jeffrey Epstein, the pedo-cannibalo-sousteneur for the rich and powerful? He or his ghost is really everywhere.
    If not, that is really an unfortunate email address to have nowadays.
32. ADB February 18, 2026 at 12:41 pm

    Bravo for standing up to this bunch of crappy, so-called “pro-democracy” activists

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