A Jewish rapper was tackled, punched, and kicked until he bled at a candlelit vigil for Iran's late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Manhattan's Washington Square Park on March 6, after he picked up a portrait of the dead dictator. The attack went viral. And a new report now traces the vigil's organizers to a web of far-left American activist groups with documented ties to Iranian state propaganda.
Rami Even-Esh, who performs as "Kosha Dillz," approached the small gathering of a few dozen people, looked around, and saw something conspicuously absent.
"I looked around for images of the regime's victims. I looked for Iranians who supported the regime, and I didn't see any."
So he picked up the Khamenei photo. Video footage shows what happened next: several vigil organizers swarmed him, tackled him to the ground, punched him in the head, and kicked him while he was down. He emerged bloodied. NYPD officers arrested both Even-Esh and one of his assailants.
The confrontation was ugly. What lies behind it is worse.
According to Fox News, a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute found that the March 6 vigil and a follow-up "Al-Quds Day" protest at Times Square on March 13 were organized, promoted, and amplified by a well-connected network of far-left U.S. activist groups with documented ties to Iranian state media.
The report draws on leaked internal records from Iran's state-owned Press TV propaganda network, dating from 2019 to 2022, revealing repeated direct contact between the network and American activist figures, including 83 calls to one senior figure. Press TV is sanctioned by the U.S. government. That fact alone should end the conversation about whether this network operates in good faith.
Fox News Digital identified at least 75 organizations connected to this activist infrastructure:
This is not organic grassroots outrage. This is a pipeline. Sanctioned foreign propaganda feeds into domestic activist organizations, which then stage events on American soil glorifying a regime that reportedly killed tens of thousands of its own protesters earlier this year. And when someone objects, he gets beaten in a public park in lower Manhattan.
The Directorate of National Intelligence defines foreign malign influence as "subversive, undeclared, coercive, or criminal activities by foreign governments, non-state actors or their proxies to affect another nation's popular or political attitudes, perceptions or behaviors to advance their interests." That definition reads like a blueprint for what the Network Contagion Research Institute uncovered.
Earlier this week, President 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. The Washington Square Park vigil offers a case study in how that campaign lands on American streets.
Adam Sohn, co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, described what's driving the phenomenon:
"A strain of moral confusion has taken hold where a growing number of people in our communities protest America while excusing regimes that jail, torture and silence their own people."
"That's not justice. It's a psychological contagion causing these people to lose sight of what evil actually looks like."
Moral confusion is generous. These groups didn't stumble into hosting a memorial for a theocratic authoritarian. They coordinated it through channels linked to his regime's propaganda arm.
The network extends beyond Iranian influence. The report ties the broader activist infrastructure to Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon based in Shanghai. Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee and House Oversight Committee have launched investigations probing whether Singham and the organizations he funds should register as foreign agents promoting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
So the same constellation of groups staging vigils for Iran's dead supreme leader may also be operating in the orbit of Chinese Communist Party influence. The common thread isn't ideology. Its utility. America's adversaries have discovered that a certain strain of far-left activist will carry water for any regime, as long as the regime positions itself against the United States.
Iranian American Reza Ebrahimi, founder of a group called Lion Sun NY, watched the scene unfold from the edge of the vigil. He told Fox News Digital he is immune to pro-regime disinformation and propaganda. He later approached Even-Esh with a different message than the fists the rapper had just absorbed.
"I'm proud of you that you're supporting us."
That single line captures the inversion at work. An actual Iranian American thanking the man who got beaten up for opposing the regime, while a network of American Marxists and Islamists organized a candlelight tribute to the man who crushed Iranian dissent.
The people mourning Khamenei in Washington Square Park weren't Iranian. The people who oppose his legacy are. That tells you everything about whose interests this network actually serves.
None of this is subtle. Leaked records. Sanctioned propaganda outlets. Dozens of calls to activist leaders. Congressional investigations. A violent assault caught on camera at a vigil for a foreign dictator, organized by groups that trace back to hostile foreign governments.
The apparatus is visible. The question is whether anyone with authority will dismantle it, or whether we'll keep pretending that 75 interconnected organizations with ties to Iranian state media and Chinese Communist Party money are just concerned citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.
Rami Even-Esh picked up a photo and got kicked in the head for it. The regime's proxies are not interested in dialogue. They never were.