On January 14, 2026, Candace Owens told her millions of followers that the mass protests in Iran, during which the regime has killed thousands of civilians, are not organic but instead an Israeli psychological operation meant to pave the way for a land grab. The claim represents a troubling distortion of reality that ignores the legitimate grievances of Iranian protesters while advancing a geographically and strategically absurd conspiracy theory.
Protests in Iran erupted on December 28, 2025, amid a deepening economic crisis. The regime responded with extreme violence, shooting and executing thousands of protesters. The crackdown has been so severe that President Donald Trump publicly warned of potential U.S. military action in response. Yet Owens dismisses this uprising as manufactured by Israel, a claim that collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Even Iran’s regime, which in the past has absurdly accused Israel of stealing its rain clouds, has not produced evidence that Israel is behind the protests. Iranian officials blamed both Trump and Netanyahu, but Owens singled out Israel alone. One Iranian official called President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the main killers of the Iranian people,” but Owens chose to focus exclusively on Netanyahu.
Iran has a long history of internal uprisings, none tied to Israel. Nationwide protest movements occurred in 1999, 2009, 2017-2019, and 2022-2023, all rooted in corruption, repression, and abuse by the regime. These protests reflect decades of systematic oppression, not foreign manipulation.
Estimates put the death toll from the regime’s crackdown between 12,000 and 15,000 people. If Israel were secretly behind the protests, Tehran could simply expose the plot. Instead, it chose mass killing. At least 18,434 people have been arrested, and Iranian state media has aired 97 forced confessions. None were reported to be admissions of working for Israel.
The brutality explains the uprising. The regime shut down the internet nationwide, deployed the IRGC and Basij militias, imprisoned and tortured thousands, and shot thousands more. This is exactly the kind of repression that fuels mass resistance, not evidence of foreign orchestration.
Owens’s central claim that Israel seeks to “take land” from Iran is geographically and militarily impossible. The two countries do not share a border, and there is no plausible territorial corridor between them. The straight-line distance between Israel and Iran is roughly 960 to 1,100 miles at the closest points. There are zero Israeli claims on Iranian territory. No maps, speeches, military doctrines, or diplomatic initiatives exist suggesting Israeli intent to annex Iranian land. If this were a land-grab psychological operation, some evidence of that ambition would exist.
Blaming foreign conspiracies is a classic authoritarian tactic. The Soviet Union and Serbia blamed the CIA, Syria’s Assad blamed “Zionists,” China blames Western NGOs, and now Iran and its defenders blame Israel. This narrative benefits the regime, not the protesters. It allows Tehran to dismiss legitimate grievances, justify mass killings as “self-defense,” and smear protesters as traitors while shifting blame away from the regime.
Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both openly hostile to Israel, have documented victims’ names, locations, and weapons used by Iranian forces. None cite Israeli involvement. The absence of such evidence from organizations predisposed to criticize Israel is particularly telling.
Iranian dissident Marziyeh Amirizadeh, who suffered nine months imprisonment and was sentenced to death by hanging because of her Christian faith, responded directly to Owens: “Candace Owens, shame on you for spreading lies and propagandas against my people who get shot in the streets for fighting against the criminal Islamic regime. The Islamic regime of Iran killed my husband and hanged my best friend in prison.”
Charlie Kirk observed, “Iran is the fundamentally biggest and most sinister evil of everybody in this room. And if you have sympathy for it, I wonder why.”
The idea that protests in Iran somehow facilitate Israeli land acquisition is not just wrong; it is geographically and militarily absurd. Using claims of foreign interference is a propaganda strategy common to authoritarian governments to undermine the legitimacy of internal opposition. Candace Owens’s claim is factually baseless, geographically impossible, strategically incoherent, identical to regime propaganda, and disrespectful to Iranian civilians who risked and lost their lives fighting for freedom from an oppressive theocracy.
