If President Donald Trump takes military action in Iran, he will need help from the Iranian people. The U.S. military can decapitate the regime from the air. But what happens on the ground will be up to Iranians, who bravely took to the streets this winter to demand their freedom — and are now waiting for the bombing to return and finish the job.
To play their part, they will need access to information they can trust about the U.S. military campaign and what is happening in their country. The regime knows this and will seek to deny Trump the ability to communicate directly with ordinary Iranians.
Unfortunately, Iran’s leaders have an unwitting ally inside the U.S. government — Kari Lake, the hapless acting head of U.S. Agency for Global Media. For a year, Lake has worked tirelessly to cripple the U.S.-backed “freedom radios” — including Voice of America and Radio Farda — that broadcast into Iran to counter regime propaganda. As an unpaid volunteer member of the board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which operates Radio Farda, I have seen the chaos she’s unleashed up close.
To succeed, kinetic warfare must be accompanied by information warfare. The United States needs a plan to surge news and messages into Iran through multiple means: Medium wave AM radio broadcasts to reach Iranians in their cars and homes; shortwave radio broadcasts over multiple channels; satellite news transmissions; and virtual private networks and other tools that allow Iranians to defeat the regime’s internet censorship and communicate with each other and the world safely through secure messaging. The goal should be to overwhelm the regime’s ability to keep people in the dark.
In an interview Wednesday, Lake told me: “We’re ready for whatever the president does in Iran, we are ready to tell that story.” Unfortunately, the facts speak otherwise. Instead of developing a plan to break the regime’s information blockade, Lake has done the opposite: She has undermined the ability of VOA and Radio Farda to reach the people of Iran. Here is the troubling timeline:
In March, Lake put all of VOA’s Persian service staff on administrative leave. That decision backfired three months later, when in June the United States and Israel launched their military campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Lake scrambled to recall roughly 40 terminated staff in the Persian division, but the damage was done. During Operation Midnight Hammer, Axios reported, VOA “broadcast just 75 minutes of content targeted to its audience in Iran over … 72 hours.” Before Lake’s arrival, VOA broadcast in Iran 24/7. “We may not be doing as many hours, but the hours we’re doing are impactful,” Lake said.
Radio Farda, which Lake was stopped from dismantling in court, helped fill the void — despite her withholding of congressionally appropriated funds that forced it to furlough half its staff.
In March, Lake abruptly cut off Radio Farda’s access to U.S.-owned transmission facilities in Kuwait — facilities Congress funded for decades specifically for this purpose — and then denied it permission to use appropriated funds to contract with private vendors for shortwave capacity.
Radio Farda still managed to broadcast via shortwave using non-grant funds. Its social media teams also flooded key channels with news, videos, and statements from Trump and reached millions of Iranians via Instagram — debunking Iran’s false narratives about Trump’s historic military operation, exposing regime propaganda and informing the Iranian people about America’s motives in striking Iran’s nuclear weapons program and personnel.
After undermining Trump during one of the most courageous moments of his presidency, Lake ought to have been chastened. Not so. When mass protests erupted across Iran, Radio Farda continued to be denied access to the U.S. transmitter in Kuwait. Despite that, it was able to broadcast statements from Trump on the internet. During the height of the protests. Radio Farda’s Instagram content was viewed at least 30 million times per day — until internet access was cut off by the regime.
After three weeks, Radio Farda was finally given access to one shortwave frequency from the Kuwait transmitter (multiple frequencies are needed to overcome jamming) but was still denied access to medium wave AM radio frequencies. But by then, the protests had died down.
In our conversation, Lake insisted that she did not deny Radio Farda access to the Kuwait transmitter. “The transmitting station has been shut down,” she said, “so it wasn’t like we’re blocking RFE/RL. As it’s been open, we’ve allowed them to use it.” Asked how many of the last 11 months it was not operating, she said, “It might have been 10 or whatever.” In July, however, USAGM officials told RFE/RL, “USAGM does not agree to the use of the tower or for grant funds to be used for this purpose.” At no point over the past 11 months did her agency inform RFE/RL that the transmitting station was down, and RFE/RL officials told me that the entire station has not been offline due to technical issues during Lake’s tenure.
Lake promised to get back to me with specific dates the transmitter was supposedly down. But 24 hours later, she instead texted a statement that said, “Trying to recycle last year’s narrative is misleading, outdated, and grossly inaccurate. USAGM is stronger and more efficient today than it was under the previous administration. VOA Persian has expanded operations and recently added an hour of programming, and Radio Farda is actively broadcasting through the USAGM transmitter in Kuwait.”
I also asked Lake about that single shortwave frequency for Radio Farda. Lake answered that she would be willing to give it more for a fee. “I’ve told my team that if they’re willing to pay the expense of it, to let them have access to it.” Let’s see if she follows through.
Lake is also throttling the ability of Radio Farda to reach the Iranian people through virtual private networks supported by the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a U.S. nonprofit authorized and funded by Congress in 2021 to help America’s freedom radios overcome internet censorship.
Over 90 percent of Radio Farda’s Iranian audience get their content through OTF-supported VPNs. To help keep these critical channels open, Republican Sens. James Lankford (Oklahoma) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) recently worked with the State Department to identify $10 million in additional funds that could be transferred to support millions of VPN users in Iran. The State Department asked Lake to transfer the funds to OTF using a well established channel — an interagency agreement used for years to get resources to OTF.
But according to OTF officials, Lake would not accept the funds from State and insisted that OTF pay for Iran operations through an advance on its existing regular budget — which would require it to cut VPN access in China and Cuba to provide it in Iran. Without the additional money, OTF said it will have to start cutting off Iranian users this month.
Lake denies she is an impediment to giving OTF the money. “That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “If the State Department wants to give $10 million to OTF, I run this agency. Marco Rubio runs the State Department. … You need to be on the phone with them.” But OTF officials said that State Department officials met with USAGM on Monday to arrange transfer of the money, and Lake wouldn’t agree. An OTF official tells me Lake has made clear that they will have to find a way around her.
In Lake’s telling, the operational limits hamstringing these critical tools have nothing to do with her. So I asked her to share her plan to surge information into Iran and get Trump’s message to the Iranian people. “We have been surging,” she insisted, but added, “I’m not in the Department of War.”
“We have given Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Network, as well as the Open Technology Fund, every single penny that was appropriated to them,” she said. “Every. Single. Penny.” She leaves out that this is only because she was forced to do so in court.
Getting accurate information to the Iranian people could mean the difference between the success and failure of a military strike. But if Kari Lake has her way, millions of Iranians will be left in an information vacuum and at the mercy of regime propaganda. If Trump decides to act, he might want a new director of U.S. Agency for Global Media who is serving his interests rather than unwittingly serving the interests of the regime he is trying to topple.
Perhaps Marco Rubio needs another job?
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