He likely did not prevent their execution.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump claimed to have secured the release of eight Iranian women sentenced to death for protesting against the regime.
The previous night, he posted on Truth Social about their impending executions, sharing a screenshot featuring a collage of eight portraits with glamorous backlighting and soft focus. The photos were promptly criticized as AI-generated. A viral post on X joked, “Trump is pleading with Iranian leaders to not execute 8 AI-generated women. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Soon after Trump’s announcement, Mizan, an Iranian state news agency, accused him of lying. “Last night, Donald Trump, citing a completely false news story, urged Iran to revoke the death sentences of eight women.” Mizan stated that some of the women had already been released while others faced prison time, not execution, and added that Tehran had made no concessions, implying that the women’s status remained unchanged.
The Iranian embassy in South Africa’s X account, known for its provocative posts among Iran’s state-affiliated accounts, quickly responded by creating its own set of eight women.
The collage Trump shared is, at the very least, AI-modified, according to Mahsa Alimardani, the associate director of the Technology Threats & Opportunities program at WITNESS, as she informed The Verge. However, the women are real. The woman in the top right of the collage is Bita Hemmati, whose photo featured in multiple reports in various right-leaning outlets last week. Hemmati has been confirmed to have received a death sentence from Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court for “operational action for the hostile government of the United States and hostile groups.”
Alimardani identified six of the women (Bita Hemmati, Mahboubeh Shabani, Venus Hossein-Nejad, Golnaz Naraghi, Diana Taherabadi, Ghazal Ghalandri), while the identities of the last two (allegedly Panah Movahedi and Ensieh Nejati) remained unverified. The six identified women participated in anti-government protests in January. Except for Hemmati, none of the other women have been reported to have received death sentences.
It’s not unexpected that Trump shows a disregard for accuracy; similarly, it’s predictable for the Iranian regime to manipulate details for its narrative or trivialize genuine political prisoners to criticize the United States.
Additionally, the account mocking Trump for saving “8 AI-generated women” is the same one that caused issues for South Korean president Lee Jae-myung after he quoted a misleadingly labeled video from that account. Israeli officials have accused the account of being notorious for disinformation. The incident involving Lee Jae-myung’s quote-post involves a blend of truth and misinformation, where the post had inaccurate facts, but the video — showing Israeli Defense Forces soldiers pushing a limp body off a Gaza rooftop — was genuine, documenting a possible international law violation by Israeli forces.
The eight Iranian protesters’ situation also involves this mix of fact and fiction, creating a blurred distortion that fuels ongoing debates over genuine human rights abuses. Their lives have been reduced to glossy image pixels and online banter, becoming fodder for propaganda and parody. As known deceivers argue online about the women’s identities and fates, they — at least six of them — remain real individuals who exist beyond the Iranian internet blackout.