Iran used fake accounts on the X platform in an effort to undermine U.S. support for Israel’s war against the regime, and to discourage American entry into the war — with significant influence but without success.
That’s according to an official investigation by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, as reported in Israel Hayom earlier this week:
The investigation, which analyzed social media activity on X during Operation Rising Lion, identified at least 100 fabricated accounts systematically promoting Tehran’s strategic messaging. Beyond merely spreading disinformation to glorify Iranian successes while fabricating Israeli failures, Tehran invested substantial resources in targeting domestic audiences within Israel and the United States.
Researchers examined approximately 100 X accounts exhibiting clear signs of automated rather than human operation. These accounts maintained continuous activity across all hours without typical human patterns of rest. Moreover, they generated content at superhuman speeds, posting thousands of messages daily. The content frequently appeared identical or remarkably similar across multiple suspicious accounts, strongly indicating coordinated bot activity. The examined network ultimately distributed 241,712 posts reaching millions of users worldwide.
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The network also promoted antisemitic messaging targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Jewish Americans as allegedly controlling US decision-making, echoing themes from American isolationist movements. The research notes, however, that Iranian bots did not directly coordinate with actual American opposition voices.
There was plenty of vocal opposition to the war from real people — at least online, and in both left-and right-wing media. However, poll numbers suggest that anti-war views were still only marginal, and that Americans supported both Israel’s war effort and President Donald Trump’s airstrikes, limited to Iran’s nuclear sites.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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