VIENNA (Dispatches) -- A veteran CIA officer was discussing Iran's future at an international security forum in Occupied Palestine on Tuesday when the moderator cut him off to cue up a breaking news bulletin on the giant monitor overhead.
Iran, the occupying regime of Israel's Channel 2 announced, had just abandoned its landmark nuclear deal with world powers and will start kicking out inspectors immediately.
Hushed confusion spread through the hall as participants among the few hundred - mostly current and former officials from countries including France, the U.S. and Russia - pulled out their phones in search of confirmation and elaboration.
It took about 25 minutes for everyone to understand that it was fake news, which the panelists already knew.
Organizers of the Tel Aviv forum, which was co-sponsored by the U.S. embassy and Lockheed Martin, said it was meant to be an entertaining thought exercise - the graphics and presenter were real, but he spoke in English, not Hebrew, which should have given the game away.
But nobody at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the body charged with verifying the Iranian accord, is laughing.
Late on Wednesday, at a private reception for diplomats, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano lashed out at efforts to hamstring an organization that's been at the forefront of nuclear security for decades, according to two foreign officials who were there.
Without naming the Zionist regime and the U.S., the career Japanese diplomat made it clear those countries were the source of his ire, they said.
"The agency's independence must not be undermined," Amano said, according to the IAEA's website. "If attempts are made to micro-manage or put pressure on the agency in nuclear verification, that is counterproductive and extremely harmful."
Three years into an agreement that was meant to be a hallmark of the Obama administration, in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief, IAEA inspectors say Teheran is in full compliance.
That hasn't stopped the Trump administration from backing out of the agreement, piling on new sanctions and trying to use the agency to turn the screws with help from Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
President Donald Trump's hardline stance on Iran has heightened tensions with the other signatories to the agreement: China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK.
It's also sowed divisions between the White House and America's spy agencies, with Trump castigating his own intelligence officials this week for being "passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran".
Netanyahu went to the U.S. Congress to lobby against the agreement before it was signed and has continued to criticize the deal since.
Last year, Netanyahu called a press conference to announce Israeli agents had stolen scores of documents from a warehouse in Teheran that he claimed proved Iran lied about previous attempt to develop a bomb.
The site turned out to be a carpet cleaning shop, drawing ridicule from around the world.
 The fake newscast in Occupied Palestine came as Iran's deputy foreign minister was in Vienna for talks with the IAEA, which is trying to keep the accord from unraveling.
Iran's leadership has said the country was ready to re-start its enrichment program using more advanced technology if the agreement fails.
The country is considering making the kind of nuclear fuel used in naval propulsion.