Washington's undercover regime-toppling initiatives affected by foreign aid cuts

The impact of the Trump administration’s broad foreign aid cuts on social programs like food security, disease control, and civil rights has been well documented in the media landscape.

However, far less is known about these cut's effects on Washington’s covert efforts to disrupt and influence the internal affairs of governments it deems undesirable, such as in Iran.

A significant portion of US aid previously funded programs designed to support digital freedom and civil society in Iran through initiatives run by the State Department. According to a US Congressional Research Service report, which has been analysed by The Cradle publication, the US Biden administration allocated $65 million to the Near East Regional Democracy (NERD) fund in 2024.

NERD was originally created in 2009 as a rebranding of the Iran Democracy Fund, an initiative launched by George W. Bush in 2006 with the goal of destabilizing the Iranian regime. The fund was officially shut down under Barack Obama but continued under different names. The Biden administration requested the same amount for 2024, including at least $16.75 million for internet freedom programs.

Despite the congressional report's claims that NERD promotes democratization, past investigations suggest it has functioned as a tool for regime change. A 2011 New York Times report exposed the Obama administration’s “Internet Freedom” initiative, which aimed to provide dissidents in Iran, Syria, and Libya with secure communications outside government control. According to the expose, a $2 million State Department grant made it possible to build an “Internet in a suitcase", an innocent-looking hardware fit into a small trunk that could be "secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet."

The Financial Times later revealed that Trump’s first administration intensified similar efforts, supporting technology that enabled Iranians to access banned websites and communicate securely. NERD funds have supported entities such as Psiphon, a VPN provider linked to exiled Iranian opposition figures and controlled by the Open Technology Fund (OTF). However, by 2024, only around three million Iranians, which is less than 4% of the population, were estimated to use Psiphon. OTF itself has admitted that its primary goal is regime change, and its budget was heavily allocated toward hosting network traffic for applications like Signal and Tor, which help users circumvent censorship.

By September 2024, as the Biden administration sought additional funds for NERD, tech giants including Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft were invited to a White House meeting to discuss expanding “digital bandwidth” for OTF-backed tools. The results of this meeting remain unclear, but any subsequent funding disruptions have caused significant setbacks for these programs.

Following the second Trump administration’s aid cuts, the Saudi-funded Iran International publication reported that US-funded media outlets and organizations monitoring human rights abuses in Iran had been forced to shut down. The cuts also affected VPN services, which many Iranians use to bypass government internet restrictions. An anonymous activist told the newspaper that 20 million Iranians relied on such tools, emphasizing their importance in evading censorship.

A US-funded NGO, Human Rights Activists in Iran, headquartered near the CIA in Virginia, described Iran’s internet as unusable without VPNs. Ahmad Ahmadian, head of California-based Holistic Resilience, warned during an interview with The Cradle that without US government support, American tech firms may be unable to sustain these anti-censorship tools. His comments suggest that these programs lack organic financial backing and are wholly reliant on Washington’s funding.

Ultimately, the Trump administration’s decision to halt overseas aid has thrown US digital intervention efforts in Iran into disarray, potentially marking a permanent setback for initiatives aimed at circumventing Tehran’s information controls.

By Nazring Sadigova