Iran's propaganda and misinformation campaign against Israel includes fake news websites in Hebrew and Arabic, an Israeli cybersecurity firm warned Thursday.
ClearSky said it had uncovered three Iranian news sites, operating in Hebrew and Arabic, as well as over a dozen fake social media accounts aimed at disseminating misinformation to Israelis.
The company named one of the fake news sites as the Hebrew-language "Tel Aviv Times." The other two are Arabic-language news sites that promote Iran's anti-Israeli and anti-Western agendas.
ClearSky also identified 14 fake Facebook profiles and 11 fake Twitter accounts, with thousands of followers between them, that were part of the Iranian misinformation network. Many of these accounts were shut down after being uncovered, the company said.
The Tel Aviv Times was launched in 2013 and has about 66,000 views per month, the vast majority of them from Israel.
ClearSky said the website effectively plagiarizes items from mainstream Israeli media and makes "crucial changes" to headlines and details in news items to support Iran's agenda.
It said it believes the fake Israeli sites are "part of Iran's worldwide disinformation infrastructure set up over the years. This includes over 100 active news and media sites in 24 countries and 29 languages."
A ClearSky official said the company believes "the purpose of setting up this infrastructure is to influence public opinion in target countries and likely to send targeted messages to activists and supporters of Iran."
Last month, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube shuttered hundreds of accounts that were allegedly tied to Iranian propaganda efforts.
Thursday's revelation came on the heels of a study by U.S.-based cybersecurity firm FireEye that found that Iran's global propaganda operation had grown and that the Islamic republic was using anonymous sites and social media accounts in 11 languages to push content from Iranian state media in the U.S., U.K., Latin America and the Middle East, while obscuring the source.
FireEye said the goal of the campaign was to "promote political narratives in line with Iranian interests. These narratives include anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes."
