The Price of Friendship: How External Shock Challenges the Narratives of the “Illiberal International”

Old partners and new choices

Throughout the 30+ years of Lukashenka’s foreign affairs efforts that are often preoccupied with both West and East “tracks” at the same time, state-aligned media and other opinion-makers are forced to operate within an environment that constantly challenges both their standing on and the adaptivity to changing foreign affairs inputs. This dynamic is the most apparent in regards to counter-agents like the EU or the Russian Federation, while other traditional partners like Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea enjoy a very steady and consistent media coverage and general narratives that do not change much decade-to-decade.

As discussed in the contemporary academia, this constructed narrative strategy in regards to long-standing partners is a typical feature of the “Illiberal International” – an informal network of illiberal and authoritarian regimes that support each other both on the ideological (media coverage, diplomacy) and practical (security, information-sharing, institutional sabotage) levels.

Iran long enjoyed this joint diplomatic and media shielding, but now, it seems, the situation is changing: since 2025 all foreign affairs efforts of the regime are absorbed into the ongoing negotiations on political prisoners with Trump’s administration. This, of course, did not shift the paradigm itself. Though, as the new war in the Middle East unfolded before everyone’s eyes in the early 2026, both the regime and its media functionaries were forced to position themselves and their narratives between supporting their long-standing ideological partner Iran and their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to normalize relations with the US, while an active US-Iran war is raging on.

Across the arc from Iran’s domestic protests to its war with the United States, the framing of Iran shifts quickly, and the explicit vocabulary of friendship recedes as the relationship becomes more demanding. This study examines how this shift challenges the narratives of the “Illiberal International”, drawing on 6,909 posts published between 1 January 2025 and 5 June 2026 by 32 Belarusian pro-government Telegram channels, grouped into three periods: Before the Iranian protests / The protests up to the outbreak of war / The US-Iran war.

The research operationalises an unofficial Belarusian pro-government pool of opinion-makers (bloggers, commentators, experts) as the proxy for the formal state stance, as the official state communication on recent US-Iran relations is vague and is largely absent.

It is worth noting that the three periods are uneven in both length and volume: the war period alone supplies almost two-thirds of the material – so the figures that follow describe trends within each period rather than equal-exposure comparisons (Chart 1).

Summary of findings

1. Iran is a peripheral topic even at the height of the US-Iran escalation. In two-thirds of posts it is unframed or neutral, including during the US-Iran war (65.8%). Iran enters the coverage selectively, when useful to a wider geopolitical narrative, rather than out of ideological solidarity.
2. The language of alliance to Iran is strongest before any real danger to relations with the US appear, and recedes once it does. Explicit “old friend or partner” framing and the “partnership” lexeme peak in the pre-protest period and then collapse, replaced not by hostility toward Iran but by the more deniable “sovereign state under pressure” and “victim of US aggression” frames. While the sympathetic undertone remains, the words that imply obligation are dropped where obligation would carry a cost or threaten the normalization with Trump.
3. Iran-Belarus relations are depersonalised. Iran is engaged mainly through its security apparatus (the IRGC) rather than a leadership Belarus identifies with, while a positive tone is reserved for Lukashenka and the home apparatus. The propaganda highlights no foreign figure the way it does its own leader.
4. The war intensifies dissonances and contradictions. Discursive dissonance concentrates precisely whenever the 3 countries engage in the same context (14.1% versus 8.0% pre-war). This is most often managed by diverting attention rather than by argument; the triangular relationship is narrated as tension, not partnership.
5. The parallel between Belarusian and Iranian protests is deliberately avoided. The “foreign interference” narrative used against Belarusians in 2020 is applied to Iranian protesters, though the explicit comparison is almost entirely suppressed (37 posts, 0.5%), with “ignored” as a dominant narrative. This could be read as a deliberate refusal to reopen 2020 discussion.
6. Trump’s presence does not soften the narratives. Rather than separate a “pragmatic” Trump from an aggressive American establishment, the coverage frames him as an aggressor or hegemon (1,260 mentions) and hardens anti-US framing across the crisis (29.8% / 46.8% / 43.4%). It seems that when pressured, propaganda circles back to a familiar Western antagonism.
7. Belarus’ involvement is reduced to that of the mediator, to avoid tri-actor tensions. The mediation-and-peace register concentrates in the war period (“mediator,” “no winners,” “peace”), moving Belarus out of the triangular bind and into a neutral-broker position committed to neither side.
8. The ideological facade is maintained, but it lacks actual substance and sequence, while the US-Iran war is not the spotlight. The anti-Western vocabulary stays constant (foreign interference is the most frequent lexeme), yet toxicity, hate speech, and the enemy image all peak during the protests rather than the war. Even with the war as the background, the enemy image is vague and rotating rather than fixed, toxicity is deflected away from Trump himself, and the highest-volume channel stays detached from the war frames.

From bilateralism to the “Illiberal International”

The “Illiberal International” could be defined as a network of regimes that reject liberal-democratic norms and organise their self-justification around sovereignty, civilisational identity, and resistance to a Western-led order. Unlike traditional bilateral or multilateral relations, this mode of engagement mostly relies on the informal, the ideological, and the abstract (Laruelle, 2022). Conceptualised by Vitali Silitski in the early 2000s as an “authoritarian international” in which authoritarian practice spreads as regimes copy one another, the idea (inspired by the case of Belarus) developed further into “preemptive authoritarianism” (Silitski, 2005, 2010). Belarus thus sits inside the network as one of its originators.

Iran occupies an analogous position today, grouped with China, Russia, and North Korea in a loose anti-Western coalition – the “axis of upheaval” – bound by a shared interest in a multipolar order (Fontaine and Kendall-Taylor, 2024). Geographic and cultural distance preconditions Belarus-Iran relations as being mostly value-driven, focused on contesting international order, rather than engaging in a genuine partnership (Middle East Institute, 2015). This suggests a situation where a value-based bond should hold, or even tighten, when honouring it grows costly.

Studies of illiberal actors’ English-language output show it builds a performative narrative for foreign audiences, distinct from domestic coverage (Fisher et al., 2022). This study inverts that lens: Belarusian pro-government Telegram, addressed to domestic sympathisers, is the less performative register Silitski located on “well-nurtured ground” (Silitski, 2010). As the genuine reactions of the propaganda are not curated for external audiences, it could be seen as a closer proxy for the regime’s genuine foreign-policy dispositions.

Forgotten partner?

The data suggests that, unsurprisingly, of all the news coverage, Iran is rarely the main subject of Belarusian pro-government content itself. The dominant topic across the sample is foreign policy and security, and within it Iran is frequently absent: in 66% of all posts the Iran frame is either “not mentioned” or “neutral” (N = 6,908).

This holds even at the height of the escalation. During the US-Iran war, 65.8% of posts still do not substantively frame Iran, against 69.9% before the protests and 60.2% during the protest window: the only period in which Iran’s prominence rises noticeably (Chart 2).

Even an allied state at war does not become a central preoccupation of the opinion-makers. Iran enters the coverage selectively, when it is useful to a wider argument, not for the sake of ideological solidarity.

Different frames of the partnership

Where Iran is framed at all, the most common characterization is that of a sovereign state under pressure (17.8%), followed by a victim of US war or aggression (12.8%). Explicit “old partner / friend” framing is comparatively rare (1.0%), as is the “destabilized country” frame tied to the protests (2.1%) (Chart 3).

Still, the vocabulary of partnership is quite strong, and it is at its strongest at the start of the period (pre-protests). The lexeme “partnership” appears most often before the protests (14.9% of posts in that period), and the explicit “old friend” framing is similarly concentrated there: 76% of its appearances fall in the pre-protest period.

As can be seen, the sympathetic and partnership register is both present and at its highest before any real disturbances appeared: in terms of its narratives and ideological cover, Belarus seemed like a trustworthy partner.

Challenges to the “old friendship”

As the crisis deepens, the explicit language of alliance fades. “Old friend / partner” framing falls from 52 mentions before the protests to 8 during the protests and 8 during the war. The “partnership” lexeme follows the same path, declining from 14.9% of posts to 6.2% and then 4.2%.

This committing vocabulary is not replaced by hostility toward Iran but by more deniable frames. The “sovereign state under pressure” characterization stays essentially flat across the three periods (16.9%, 21.8%, 17.5%), while “victim of US aggression” rises in the war period (9.8%, 4.5%, 15.7%) (Chart 4).

Sympathy for Iran persists, but the words that imply any obligation or call-to-action are quietly dropped at the point where obligation would carry a cost or threaten the newly found agency with the US.

Truly personal?

Despite decades of official visits, summits, and generous diplomatic exchanges, when Iranian actors are named, the most frequent is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (532 mentions), ahead of the Iranian people (312), Ali Khamenei (158), President Pezeshkian (154), and Mojtaba Khamenei (98). Iran is engaged primarily through its security apparatus rather than through a political leadership with which Belarus identifies.

Positive tone and appraisal is reserved almost entirely for domestic figures: Lukashenka (74 posts), Belarusian apparatus (25), and brief bilateral set-pieces pairing Lukashenka with Pezeshkian (36) – rather than for Iran’s leadership in its own right. The recurring attention to Mojtaba Khamenei points to interest in succession and continuity rather than endorsement of any individual (Chart 5).

Despite the intrinsic personal nature of engagement within the “Illiberal International”, propaganda stays cautious about highlighting anyone except for its own leader.

Impossible choice

Discursive dissonance – internal contradiction within a post, or a conspicuous silence around an inconvenient fact – is present in 623 posts (9% of the sample). It is not evenly distributed and is more likely to appear where the United States, Belarus, and Iran all appear together: 14.1% of such posts show it, against 8.0% where the “triangular” relationship is absent.

The most common dissonance observed is a plain logical contradiction (552 posts), and the most common way of handling dissonances is to change the subject: “diversion of attention” is the dominant resolution strategy (604 posts), far ahead of separating one actor from another (14) or generalizing (5). The “triangular” relationship itself is overwhelmingly narrated as tension (1,005 posts) rather than partnership (146) (Chart 6).

This is a clear point where the Belarusian propaganda struggles the most, as it requires handling both old Iranian ideological commitments and the new US aspirations. To avoid this tension, opinion-makers simply redirect the audience’s attention.

The echo of 2020

Iranian protesters are, for the most part, simply absent from the coverage (ignored in 6,659 posts). Where they appear, they are most often discredited as agents of the CIA, Mossad, or foreign interference (216 posts), a characterization that peaks during the protest period (151 posts). Positive or sympathetic portrayals are rare (15). At the same time, the explicit comparison between Iran’s protests and Belarus’s own 2020 protests rarely appears (37 posts, 0.5%) (Chart 7).

The same “foreign interference” narrative that was abused by the propaganda in 2020 is reused on Iranian protesters. But the comparison that would draw attention to that parallel is left out. Because “ignored” so dominates the category, this absence can be read with certainty as deliberate avoidance. Despite “turning the page”, Belarusian propaganda, it seems, is not yet ready to openly include the 2020 events in its discourses.

Challenges to the “pragmatic partner”

Seeing a tangible shift in how the Belarusian propaganda frames Iran, one could assume that the narratives strategically double-down on the “pragmatic” Trump, as well as distinguish him from an aggressive American establishment. They do not. Trump is framed as an aggressor or hegemon in 1,260 posts, against 31 that cast him as a pragmatic partner and 11 as a friend of Belarus or Lukashenka; explicit “Trump is not Congress / not the military-industrial complex” framings number around eight in total.

Hostility toward the United States as a country hardens rather than softens over the crisis: the share of posts framing the US as an aggressor rises from 29.8% before the protests to 46.8% during them and 43.4% during the war. In cases of a joint US-Iran coverage (1,518 posts), the US is the aggressor in 1,506, and the paired “Iran as victim, US as aggressor” accounts for 695. The explicit Lukashenka-Trump pairing remains marginal throughout (78 posts) (Chart 8).

Despite clear negotiation efforts and warm communications on the bilateral level between Trump’s and Lukashenka’s administrations, Belarusian propaganda, it seems, cannot but return to a very familiar path of Western antagonism in time of pressure and uncertainty.

Belarus as a mediator

A distinct self-image emerged throughout the channel whilst the US-Iran war escalated. The vocabulary of mediation and peace peaks in the war period: “mediator” rises from 16 to 2 to 42 mentions across the three periods, “no winners” from 4 to 3 to 37, and “peace” from 126 to 23 to 169 (Chart 9).

As previously discussed, the narrative strategically removes  from the impossible “triangular” discourse altogether, and this is one way of achieving this: coverage moves Belarus into the role of a neutral broker rather than an active supporter of one or the other.

Vocabulary and conduct

The anti-Western register itself is loud and constant. “Foreign interference” is the single most frequent lexeme in the sample (1,429 mentions), ahead of “destabilization” (669), “partnership” (501), and “sovereignty” (388). The ideological facade is maintained throughout.

Yet the affective intensity behind it does not follow the war. Toxicity, hate-speech markers, the presence of an enemy image, and negative tone all peak during the protest period rather than during the war: the share of posts carrying an enemy image, for instance, rises to 42.1% during the protests, against 29.2% before and 34.6% during the war. When hate speech is present, it is overwhelmingly political (2,245 posts) rather than ethnic (2) or religious (21).

Despite the toxicity directed mainly at the United States – Trump (521), the US Army (358), and the West (431), the enemy image is vague and changing, rather than a stable category: the CIA and Mossad feature during the protests, the Pentagon and “neoconservatives” during the war (64 mentions in the war period), while Trump himself is almost never a direct enemy image. It is also worth noting that the anti-Western vocabulary is also carried disproportionately by a handful of ideological commentators, while the highest-volume channel remains comparatively detached from the war frames (Chart 10).

The vocabulary analysis shows that the ideological facade persists, even though propaganda does not pin-point a specific enemy. At the same time, markers of toxicity and hate-speech are misplaced and show that the US-Iran war is not necessarily a point of escalation for regime proxies.

Methodology

This study automatically collected posts from pro-government Telegram channels, categorized them using a custom coding system, as well as analyzed them for toxicity and hate speech. Because this process was automated, some categories are more accurate than others. The results should be seen as showing overall trends rather than exact measurements.

The analysis period runs from 1 January 2025 to 5 June 2026 and is divided into three phases reflecting the trajectory of the Iranian crisis:

The sample comprises 6,909 posts from 32 pro-government channels (for example Belorusskiy Silovik, Azaronak / STV, Obyektivny Yevgen, Zemlya Nasha, BelVPO, Nevolfovich). For each post the codebook records the time period; the framing of Iran, the United States, and Trump; the principal actor; the representation of Iranian protesters and any explicit comparison to 2020; the presence, type, and resolution strategy of discursive dissonance; the enemy image; tone and toxicity toward the principal actor; key lexemes; and hate-speech type.

Conclusion

The analysis suggests that while Belarusian propaganda channels continue to build an ideological facade of solidarity and joint push-back against Western aggression, in practice Iran is very easily turned a blind eye on whenever the topics become too sensitive, or whenever the negotiations with Trump accelerate. Discursive dissonances clearly poison the narratives after the start of the US-Iran war. The Iranian protests, which so clearly mirror the 2020 protests in Belarus, are deliberately toned down to avoid any unnecessary comparisons, despite the propaganda’s unambiguous stance toward the anti-ayatollah protesters. And while the propaganda does not detach Trump from the other negatively covered actors of the “Western aggression,” toxicity and hate speech in propaganda communications are largely deflected away from him.

Combined, the regime’s narratives, analysed through its unofficial proxies, prove neither systemic nor genuinely ideological at their core: support for both Iran and Trump is shallow and inconsistent, an ideological facade laid over a pragmatic, situational stance. These results feed into the notion of a fundamental challenge to the 30 steady years of the “Illiberal International”. Lukashenka’s regime drifts more and more, at least at the narrative level, from the ideological commitments of the past toward a very self-centered notion of survival today.