TEHRAN — Bushra Shaikh took two state-sponsored trips to Iran in spring 2025, visiting in February and again in April, according to a Factnameh investigation. The tours were organized by IRIB World Service, the international arm of Iran’s state broadcaster.

Factnameh reported that Shaikh played a “highly active role in reproducing the government’s narrative” during her visits and found her social media activity showed a “highly calculated pattern of social media manipulation.” Some of her posts amounted to “broadcasting the unedited propaganda of the Islamic Republic.” Her content about Iran coincided with critical events including the intensification of the Iran-Israel conflict, ceasefire talks, and nationwide protests in January.

Shaikh, who owns a luxury clothing brand and has hundreds of thousands of followers on X and Instagram, posted frequently from Iran. In the past year, 20% of her 4,047 social media posts focused on Iran, generating what Factnameh described as “disproportionately high engagement” and millions of interactions. She shared photographs from sites including an Armenian monastery, Tehran’s Tajrish bazaar, and the Strait of Hormuz, where she posed on a boat with a caption referencing the “Epstein empire” in apparent reference to the U.S.

During her second trip in April, Shaikh received higher access than during her first, meeting senior Iranian officials including the governor of Isfahan and the foreign ministry spokesperson, according to Fereidoon Bashar, executive director of ASL19. Bashar said Iran appears to recognize that “mainstream media is losing audiences and that individual influencers are easier to engage and more likely to align with state narratives.” He added there has been a “long tradition of having prominent western figures to Iran who are aligned with anti-imperialist, anti-colonial frameworks.”

Shaikh posted a photograph modeling a black and gold scarf she said was a gift from Iran’s culture minister and wrote that most Iranians do not view internet restrictions as a government crackdown but as “temporary citizen security.” Iranian digital rights activists criticized her tours, noting she appeared to have internet access that ordinary Iranians lacked. Some activists affiliated with the Women, Life, Freedom movement circulated an online petition suggesting she should be investigated for potential sanctions violations.