Rumors of American fighter jets bombarding IRGC targets in Tehran have sparked fierce polarization on Telegram, with anti-government users cheering the alleged strikes while others condemn the celebrations as treasonous.
On March 2, 2026, Farsi-language Telegram channels were inundated with explosive, unverified reports of an active military assault on the Iranian capital. A heavily circulated alert on گروه خبرفوری (Khabarforial), which garnered over 27,000 views, explicitly stated: "At least 20 American fighter jets at low altitude in Tehran are firing." Follow-up posts within the same channel amplified these claims, asserting that Sepah (IRGC), Basij, and "everything in Tehran was hit".
The news provoked an immediate and viciously polarized response among the channel's followers, revealing a predominantly anti-regime audience openly celebrating foreign military intervention. Channel users cheered for the destruction of the Iranian establishment, adopting an aggressively militant editorial voice. According to Khabarforial's users, the attackers should kill every IRGC member. One commenter praised dear Israel and sweet America, demanding they strike until all the bloodthirsty Sepahi creatures are wiped out. Another user urged the total eradication of the clergy, telling the attackers to strike so the generation of Mullahs is lost from the Middle East.
Amidst the celebrations, commenters gleefully mocked the Islamic Republic's military incompetence. One user told Khabarforial that the military should "turn off air defenses so the Mullahs don't lose face", reasoning that it would be less embarrassing to claim the systems were intentionally inactive rather than utterly defeated. For many of these opposition voices, the purported strikes signaled that the Islamic Republic is already finished.
Conversely, a minority of users fiercely pushed back against both the veracity of the reports and the tone of the anti-regime commenters. One skeptical user, claiming personal military experience and active contacts within the IRGC, dismissed the airstrike narrative entirely, stating: "I myself served in that doghouse Sepah, none of this bullshit is true." Meanwhile, nationalist and pro-regime users condemned the celebratory opposition. They labeled the cheering commenters as dishonorable traitors whose brains are filled with plaster, lamenting that fellow citizens were allegedly being killed while compatriots applauded the foreign assault.
The source material relies heavily on a single unverified viral alert and anonymous user comments from the Khabarforial channel. The comments highlight severe domestic polarization, featuring extreme profanity, sectarian hostility, and deeply partisan rhetoric, which have been translated faithfully into English to reflect the raw sentiment and exact editorial framing of the Persian-language discourse.