In recent weeks, Elon Musk has followed president Donald Trump’s lead, slamming Iranian government officials and supporting the thousands of protesters railing against the regime. He even provided free access to his Starlink satellites in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout.
But while publicly proclaiming his support of the protesters, Musk’s company X appears to be profiting from the very same government officials he railed against, potentially violating US sanctions in the process, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) shared exclusively with WIRED.
TTP identified more than two dozen X accounts allegedly run by Iranian government officials, state agencies, and state-run news outlets which display a blue checkmark, indicating they have access to X’s premium service. These accounts were sharing state-sponsored propaganda at a time when ordinary Iranians had no access to the internet, and their messages appeared to be artificially boosted to increase reach and engagement, which is a key aspect of X’s premium service. An X Premium subscription, which is the only way to receive a blue checkmark, costs $8 a month, while a Premium+ subscription, which removes ads and boosts reach even further, costs $40 a month.
At a time when the Trump administration is threatening Iran with possible military action if it does not meet demands related to nuclear enrichment and ballistic missiles, X appears to be undermining those efforts by providing a social media bullhorn for the Iranian government to spread its message.
“The fact that Elon Musk is not just platforming these individuals, but taking their money to boost their content through these premium subscriptions and give them extra features also means he’s undermining the sanctions that the US and the Trump administration are actually applying,” Katie Paul, the director of the TTP, tells WIRED.
X did not respond to a request for comment, but within hours of WIRED flagging several X accounts belonging to Iranian officials, their blue checkmarks were removed. The rest of the accounts identified by TTP but not shared with X continue to display a blue checkmark.
The White House directed WIRED to the Treasury when asked for comment. A Treasury spokesperson said they do not comment on specific allegations but “we take allegations of sanctionable conduct extremely seriously.”
At the end of last year, protests broke out in the Iranian capital of Tehran on December 28 over the continuing devaluation of the Iranian rial against the dollar and a widespread economic crisis in the country. Over the following days, tens of thousands of protesters poured onto the streets in cities across the country, calling for regime change and the end of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 37-year reign.
In response, the regime brutally cracked down on protesters, arresting tens of thousands of people and killing thousands more. The true death toll is still unknown but could be much higher than currently reported.
Trump signaled his support for the protesters in a post on Truth Social on January 2, promising to come to their rescue. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he wrote. Musk quickly followed Trump, calling Khamenei “delusional.”
On January 5, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, who had a blue checkmark at the time, wrote in a post on X, “This time, we will show no mercy to the rioters.” Ejei was among the accounts whose blue checkmarks were removed on Wednesday after WIRED contacted the company.
A few days later, X changed the Iranian flag emoji on the platform to one used before the 1979 revolution, featuring a lion and sun. On January 14, Musk announced that anyone with a Starlink device would be free to access the internet in Iran without a subscription. At the time, Starlink devices were the only viable way of getting online after the government imposed a near total internet blackout.
But during all of this public signaling of his opposition to the Iranian regime, dozens of accounts on X continued to share unchecked propaganda on the platform.
Among the government officials identified by TTP is Ali Larijani, a senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader, whose X account has over 120,000 followers. He had a blue checkmark until Wednesday when X appeared to remove it after WIRED reached out for comment. When Trump called on Iranians to continue protesting, Larijani wrote on X that Trump is one of the “main killers of the people of Iran.” Larijani was sanctioned by the US last month; the Treasury department called him one of the “architects of Iran’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protests.”
Ali Akbar Velayati, a member of the Supreme Leader’s inner circle and a former foreign minister, also had a blue checkmark on his account until Wednesday. Velayati was sanctioned by the Treasury in 2019 for providing a “lifeline” to the regime of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Velayati was also charged by Argentinian authorities with homicide over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead. On December 30, referencing Trump, Velayati wrote on his X account that “without the need for any kind of foreign assistance, [Iran] will continue the peaceful advancement of its nuclear industry and its legitimate defensive capabilities.”
X has a system for identifying heads of state and government officials, applying a grey checkmark to accounts that have been verified. Indeed Khamenei, who has millions of followers across multiple X accounts, has a grey checkmark next to several of his accounts. Despite this system being available, many Iranian government officials have a blue checkmark on their profiles, which would indicate that they are paying for X’s premium service.
X’s website states that a “blue checkmark means that the account has an active subscription to X Premium and meets our eligibility requirements.” Those eligibility requirements include a verified phone number.
Prior to Musk taking control of X, the platform then known as Twitter gave blue checkmarks to notable accounts who verified their identity. However, X began winding down that system in 2023 and, according to the company, those accounts “will not retain a blue checkmark unless they are subscribed to X Premium.”
Like many of the accounts identified by TTP, Ejei, Larijani and Velayati are all listed as “specially designated nationals” by the Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which has been enforcing sanctions against Iran for decades.
There are exemptions to the sanctions against the Iranian government, and one, issued in 2022, allows for US tech companies to provide access to their platforms in Iran. This is to allow ordinary citizens to share information with the outside world. The exemption means Iranian government officials can also use these platforms, but only if those services are “publicly available” and “at no cost.”
“It is not possible to know if there was a violation without knowing the specific details of the arrangement between X and the various sanctioned users,” Oliver Krischik, a lawyer at GKG Law who focuses on OFAC sanctions, tells WIRED. “However, if X provided these ‘blue checkmarks’ to the Iranian government for a fee or provided services to the Iranian government not available to the public at no extra cost without a license, then that would appear to fall outside the authorization.”
Another blue checkmark account identified by TTP belongs to Ali Ahmadnia, who is the communications chief for Iran’s president. Ahmadnia’s account featured a link where people could send him money using bitcoin.
“Such a feature would not be covered by any of the otherwise potentially available informational materials exemption or general licenses with respect to services incident to communications,” Kian Meshkat, an attorney specializing in US economic sanctions, tells WIRED. “It could arguably amount to a prohibited dealing in the blocked property of the Government of Iran, as well as a prohibited export of financial services to Iran under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations.”
At the time of publication, the button appears to have been removed from Ahmadnia’s account on desktop, but remains visible on the X app.
“This is part of a bigger issue we’ve seen with X where they are directly profiting through premium subscriptions, through sanctioned entities and individuals,” Paul says. “When we look at the mass layoffs X underwent after Elon Musk took over, what we see is the deterioration of not just trust and safety and moderation, but actually legal compliance for things like US sanctions.”
This is not the first time Musk has been accused of violating US sanctions by providing premium services to prohibited individuals. In June, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to the Treasury following the publication of another report by TTP that claimed X was providing blue checkmarks to US-sanctioned terrorists.
“Now it looks like X may be letting sanctioned Iranian government officials make money off its platform,” Warren tells WIRED. “By failing to take basic steps to enforce our sanctions, the Trump Administration continues to undermine our national security and the integrity of the financial system.”
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