Abstract. We present a data-assisted iterative regularization method for solving ill-posed inverse problems. The proposed approach, termed IRMGL+[Formula: see text], integrates classical iterative techniques with a data-driven regularization term realized through an iteratively updated graph Laplacian. Our method commences by computing a preliminary solution using any suitable reconstruction method, which then serves as the basis for constructing the initial graph Laplacian. The solution is subsequently refined through an iterative process, where the graph Laplacian is simultaneously recalibrated at each step to effectively capture the evolving structure of the solution. A key innovation of this work lies in the formulation of this iterative scheme and the rigorous justification of the classical discrepancy principle as a reliable early stopping criterion specifically tailored to the proposed method. Under standard assumptions, we establish stability and convergence results for the scheme when the discrepancy principle is applied. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of our method through numerical experiments utilizing four distinct initial reconstructors [Formula: see text]: the adjoint operator (Adj), filtered back projection, total variation denoising, and standard Tikhonov regularization. It is observed that IRMGL + Adj demonstrates a distinct advantage over the other initializers, producing a robust and stable approximate solution directly from a basic initial reconstruction.