This claim is a dangerous conflation that weaponizes legitimate Iranian anti-regime sentiment while misrepresenting the actual conditions on the ground inside Iran. The narrative fuses real footage and audio from diaspora Iranians — exiles living in Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Toronto — with the entirely different, far more dangerous reality facing Iranians living inside the Islamic Republic. Analysts at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) explicitly documented this split in their real-time assessment of the Iranian social media discourse during Israeli military operations, warning that "residents of Iran express cries of fear, while exiles abroad share cries of joy." Presenting diaspora jubilation as Tehran street protests is not merely inaccurate — it is a form of disinformation that endangers the very Iranians it claims to champion.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

When large crowds did gather in Tehran's Enghelab Square during and after Israeli airstrikes, they were documented by The Guardian in March 2026 as rallying in support of the new supreme leader — carrying portraits of the slain Ayatollah Khamenei and pledging allegiance to his successor. Al Jazeera documented further large pro-government demonstrations across Tehran on March 24, 2026, with crowds waving Iranian flags and chanting nationalist slogans, directly contradicting any narrative of mass public celebration of Israeli military action. The BBC's contemporaneous reporting captured a deeply mixed internal mood — panic, mass exodus from central Tehran, and fear of bombardment — alongside isolated private expressions of relief among committed regime opponents, but nothing resembling organized pro-Israel street celebrations.

• INSS researchers monitoring Iranian social media during active Israeli operations found the dominant internal narrative to be "Out of hatred for Haman, not love for Mordechai" — Iranians distinguishing sharply between opposition to the clerical regime and any embrace of Israeli military force against their country.
• Many regime opponents inside Iran explicitly expressed resentment toward what they called the "Israeli bear hug" — the framing of them as pro-Israel collaborators, which they viewed as delegitimizing their domestic struggle and exposing them to lethal retaliation from the IRGC.
• Iran's security chief publicly warned that any Iranian taking to the streets against the government during Israeli strikes would be treated as "an enemy of the state" — underscoring why the idea of thousands openly chanting "We love Israel" in Tehran is implausible on its face.
• The New York Times reported in January 2026 that Israeli intelligence analysts themselves assessed the internal protests as insufficient to threaten the regime, with security forces killing thousands of demonstrators — hardly the environment for mass open pro-Israel demonstrations.

The Anatomy of a Viral Disinformation Narrative

Understanding why this myth spreads requires understanding the specific ecosystem that produces it. The Iranian diaspora — particularly large communities in North America and Europe — genuinely did celebrate Israeli strikes on regime infrastructure, and many did film themselves chanting pro-Israel slogans. These videos are real. The falsification occurs in the labeling: footage filmed in Beverly Hills or Düsseldorf is captioned as "Tehran streets," and the natural, understandable euphoria of exiles who have spent decades watching their homeland suffer under theocratic tyranny is falsely presented as a mass popular uprising inside Iran. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has documented that while anti-regime sentiment inside Iran has reached historically high levels — with Iranians blaming Tehran rather than the West for economic devastation — this sentiment does not translate into public, organized, pro-Israel displays inside a country where such an act can result in immediate arrest, torture, or execution.

There is also a deeper political problem with this narrative. INSS analysis specifically warned that portraying ordinary Iranians as pro-Israel "traitors" is strategically counterproductive, alienating the very population the democratic world should seek to empower. Many Iranians who despise the Islamic Republic simultaneously oppose Israeli military strikes on their country's soil, viewing the two positions as entirely compatible. Conflating opposition to the regime with love for Israel does real damage: it hands the regime propaganda victories, exposes dissidents inside Iran to persecution, and replaces a nuanced, accurate picture of Iranian civil society with a cartoon that serves no one's actual strategic interests.

Conclusion: A Myth That Harms the Cause It Claims to Serve

The claim that thousands of Iranians flooded Tehran chanting "We love Israel" is not only unverified — it is contradicted by documented crowd behavior, expert intelligence assessments, and the structural realities of life under a theocratic security state. Promoting this narrative does a profound disservice to the genuine, courageous Iranian opposition movement, which has paid for its dissent in blood. It reduces a complex, multi-generational struggle for liberty to a pro-Israel cheering section, a framing the Iranian regime actively exploits to brand protesters as foreign agents deserving of execution. Accurately distinguishing between diaspora sentiment and internal Iranian reality is not a concession to the Islamic Republic — it is the foundation of honest, effective journalism and the only framework that actually serves the long-term cause of Iranian freedom.