A photo shows one protester carrying a poster depicting President Donald Trump with bloodied hands and others holding portraits of then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The image was captured during a July 2025 Shiite procession in Georgia’s Marneuli municipality — an area populated mainly by the country’s largely Shiite ethnic Azerbaijani minority. It is also featured in a March 2026 report by the conservative Hudson Institute. Authors Giorgi Kandelaki and Luke Coffey use it to illustrate what they say is expanding Iranian ideological, religious and organizational influence in Georgia — a claim that Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party has sharply denied.
Not Just About Russia Anymore
For years, Georgia was viewed in Washington as a post-Soviet success story — a small state with outsized ambitions that actively pursued EU and NATO membership while contributing troops to U.S.-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, often at significant cost.
That relationship sharply deteriorated during the Biden administration amid growing concerns in both Washington and Brussels over steps taken by the ruling Georgian Dream government. These included increasingly anti-Western rhetoric, violent crackdowns on protests and controversial “foreign agents” legislation targeting civil society organizations and independent media.
In late 2024, the United States suspended the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Charter. Washington also imposed sanctions on Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili for undermining Georgia’s democracy to Russia’s benefit. More than a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, the strategic agreement remains suspended.
“Many people thought that Georgia’s slide away from the West and the United States in particular is just about Russia,” said Kandelaki, who was a Georgian opposition lawmaker until 2020 and one of the leaders of the 2003 Rose Revolution that brought about a period of reforms in the country. “One of the messages of this report is that that is not the case. This trajectory away from the civilized world has an Iranian dimension as well.”
From Democratic Backsliding to Security Fears
Much of the report centers on Al-Mustafa International University — an Iranian network of religious seminaries that operates in several Georgian cities and was sanctioned in December 2020, in the final days of Trump’s first term. At the time, the U.S. Treasury Department said the institution enabled Iranian IRGC-Quds Force intelligence and recruitment operations through its international student network.
Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, has argued that the fact the university continues operating in Georgia even after Trump’s return to office “is quite telling that the Georgian Dream government isn’t taking this matter seriously.”
And during a May 21 panel at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Kandelaki argued that the alleged influence is already being put to work against U.S. interests. Last fall, the Justice Department announced that Polad Omarov, a Georgian citizen described as a Russian mob figure, had been sentenced along with an accomplice to 25 years in prison for an Iranian-backed plot to kill Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad. In March 2026, Greece detained a Georgian citizen accused of spying on U.S. naval assets.
‘Turn Up The Heat Elsewhere In the Caucasus’
As Armenia and Azerbaijan have pivoted away from Russia and toward the West, the so-called Middle Corridor, the trade and transit route running through the South Caucasus, which bypasses both Iran and Russia, has gained strategic importance.
But Coffey said that both Moscow and Tehran view the changing geopolitical dynamics in the South Caucasus with growing concern.
“Do you think Iran wants a Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity literally going along its border?” Coffey asked during the discussion, referring to a Trump-backed initiative aimed at strengthening regional connectivity between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “Do you think Russia wants this? Absolutely not.”
“What’s a way to make problems?” he continued. “Turn up heat elsewhere in the Caucasus — and in this case, Georgia.”
Coffey argued that Washington should set clear conditions for any future engagement with Georgian Dream, including cracking down on IRGC recruiting in the country. He added that a recently announced Trump Tower in Tbilisi should not change the picture.
“We need to be very clear with what we’re expecting,” he said. “It’s not an artificially intelligence-generated picture of a Trump Tower in Tbilisi. That’s not going to cut it. It needs to be something more substantial.”
Georgian Dream Rejects the Allegations
Georgian Dream officials have strongly rejected the accusations in the Hudson Institute report, describing them as politically motivated and part of a broader campaign to discredit the government.
The government has repeatedly stated that claims about Georgia becoming a sanctions-evasion hub or a platform for Iranian intelligence activities are baseless and irresponsible.
Shortly after the report’s publication in March, Georgia’s State Security Service launched an investigation under Article 319 of the Criminal Code, which covers “assisting hostile activity against Georgia on behalf of a foreign state or organization.” The probe led to the questioning of several public figures, including Kandelaki and former defense minister Tinatin Khidasheli, who had spoken publicly about Iranian influence in Georgia.
Kakha Kaladze, the mayor of Tbilisi and Secretary General of Georgia Dream, dismissed Khidasheli and Kandelaki as “ordinary traitors.”
“Given what is happening today in the region, in the Middle East, and generally how tense and difficult the situation is globally, these kinds of statements constitute hostile activity against the country,” Kaladze said.
“When did you last feel Iranian influence in Georgia? When did the Iranian wind last blow here? This is not serious,” Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili, said, responding to remarks made a day earlier by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-GA, during the Hudson Institute panel.
Wilson had alleged that “Georgian Dream has helped Iran in the current war by allowing strategic Russian airlifters to transit its airspace en route to Iran, carrying supplies to help the Iranian regime.”
“We cannot prove that we are not elephants,” said Papuashvili.
