A small group of New Yorkers lined candles beneath a portrait of Iran’s late leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a recent "vigil" in Manhattan's Washington Square Park, and within minutes, a confrontation turned violent, then viral.

As Jewish rapper Rami Even-Esh approached the March 6 vigil, he noticed something was missing in the pro-regime gathering, which drew only a few dozen people from five far-left groups, including the socialist "Workers World Party."

"I looked around for images of the regime’s victims," Even-Esh told Fox News Digital, referring to tens of thousands of protesters the Iranian regime reportedly killed earlier this year. "I looked for Iranians who supported the regime, and I didn’t see any."

Slowly, Even-Esh, who performs under the moniker Donald Trump warned that Iran is pursuing an aggressive disinformation campaign, accusing the regime of using artificial intelligence and coordinated narratives to shape perception beyond traditional battlefields.

Drawing on leaked internal records, dating from 2019 to 2022, from Iran’s state-owned Press TV propaganda network, researchers identified repeated direct contact between Press TV officials and organizers of recent pro-regime protests, as well as patterns of coordination and amplification that helped transform small local gatherings into widely circulated global flashpoints.

The report identifies a structured ecosystem linking U.S. activist groups, intermediary media platforms and Iranian state outlets to a campaign of malign foreign influence, which is IRAN WAGING EXTENSIVE AI MISINFORMATION WARFARE AGAINST US, ALLIES

On the edge of the Khamenei vigil, Iranian American Reza Ebrahimi, founder of a group called Lion Sun NY, watched the scene unfold with Even-Esh emerging bloodied and handcuffed.

Ebrahimi told Fox News Digital he is immune to pro-regime disinformation and propaganda. He was emboldened to see that Even-Esh also didn't succumb to the intimidation. 

He later told him, "I’m proud of you that you’re supporting us."

Azziana Solomon contributed to this report.