Elon Musk’s social-media company, X, appears to have violated U.S. sanctions by selling “Premium” subscriptions to accounts linked to Iranian government officials and state entities, according to a Tech Transparency Project (TTP) report. 

TTP identified more than two dozen accounts it alleges are run by Iranian government officials, state agencies, and state-run news outlets that display blue checkmarks. The nonprofit organization, which operates as a watchdog for large tech companies, said that the X subscribers who receive blue checkmarks on their “premium” accounts can get a share in advertising revenue on the social-media platform. 

X users who receive the checkmark pay either $8 or $40 per month, depending on whether they opt for the more expensive “Premium+” subscription tier to eliminate ads and boost content to a larger audience, the report noted. Many of the accounts identified in the report were verified in August 2025 or later, and some of those posted longer content only available to users with Premium subscriptions, TTP said. 

The report highlights several accounts held for Iranian officials and entities named on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List, including Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, who heads Iran’s judiciary and allegedly posts on X as “@ejei_org”. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Ejei in September 2010, describing him then as the intelligence chief overseeing Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters and political figures in 2009, TTP said. 

Ejei’s alleged X account identifies him as the owner in Farsi and has over 8,000 followers, according to the report. 

“The fact that Elon Musk is not just platforming these individuals, but taking their money to boost their content through these premium subscriptions and give them extra features also means he’s undermining the sanctions that the U.S. and the Trump administration are actually applying,” TTP director Katie Paul told WIRED, which first covered the findings. 

The magazine reached out to X for a comment on the matter and did not receive a reply. Hours after WIRED flagged several problematic X accounts to the company, the blue checkmarks were removed. 

Read the TTP report here

Read more from WIRED