5 minWorld
Danon's Starlink Offer to Iran Reaches Millions, With 40% of Instagram Views From Iran
A video of Israel's U.N. ambassador offering a Starlink device to an Iranian representative drew about 9 million views, with nearly 40% of Instagram viewers in Iran. Danon's office says the reach inside Iran was unexpected and describes a subsequent recirculation of an old video as a disinformation campaign.
A video of Israel's ambassador to the United Nations offering a Starlink device to an Iranian representative has drawn roughly 9 million views across social media, with nearly 40% of its Instagram audience located in Iran, according to analytics shared with Fox News Digital.
The encounter grew out of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the U.N. General Assembly, where he displayed a Starlink device while delivering a message aimed at the Iranian people. According to a representative for Ambassador Danny Danon, Netanyahu had prepared the Starlink element for his speech and asked that the device be offered to the Iranian delegation afterward. Danon then approached an Iranian representative with the device in an exchange captured on video. The Iranian representative declined to take it.
Danon later posted the exchange on social media, where it quickly gained traction. Instagram audience analytics show 39.9% of viewers were located in Iran, the largest share from any country. The United States accounted for 14.3%, followed by Israel at 12.6%, Canada at 5.9% and Germany at 4.1%.
Danon's office said it was surprised by the video's reach inside Iran, describing such an audience as unusual for Israeli diplomatic accounts. «We couldn't imagine to be the popular,» the representative said, referring to the video's reach in Iran. The office viewed the unusually large Iranian audience as significant given the message accompanying the Starlink offer, which the representative described as one of freedom and freedom of expression for the Iranian people.
But Danon's office says another online trend emerged as the video spread. The representative said accounts the office believes are Iranian began recirculating a years-old video of former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan being escorted from the General Assembly during a protest against then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. That video dates to September 2023, when Erdan walked through the General Assembly holding a photograph of Mahsa Amini during Raisi's speech.
One post recirculating the old video in recent hours has drawn hundreds of thousands of views while portraying the incident as a current confrontation involving Israel's U.N. ambassador. Danon's representative characterized the renewed circulation as a «disinformation campaign» intended to counter the attention surrounding Danon's video.
«From our perspective, the Danon video moved something in Iran,» the representative said, arguing that the Iranian regime was attempting to «change the story.»
The episode unfolded as Middle East issues took center stage at the United Nations, with regional leaders confronting Iran's war, Gaza and the Houthi threat. The same period saw President Trump and Iran's president converge on New York for a high-profile U.N. showdown as Tehran faces tight restrictions.
Iran has also accelerated an execution campaign against anti-regime activists amid internet censorship, a backdrop that gives the Starlink offer added resonance. Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by SpaceX, has been discussed as a tool for providing connectivity in areas where governments restrict access.
The analytics shared with Fox News Digital offer a rare window into how Israeli diplomatic messaging travels inside Iran, where access to many international platforms is limited. The office said the scale of the Iranian audience was not something it had anticipated, and it pointed to the gap between official restrictions and the public's apparent interest in the exchange.
Danon's office maintains that the video's spread inside Iran signals interest in the message it carried, while the recirculated Erdan clip represents an effort to redirect attention. The representative did not provide further details on how the office identified the accounts as Iranian.
Fox News Digital's Emma Bussey contributed to this report.
Source: foxnews.com
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