Hundreds of fake accounts and thousands of posts: this is how Iran tries to influence the elections in Israel

A report by the Spanish company Golden Owl has exposed an Iranian influence network on X targeting Israel's October 27 elections. The network of 649 fake accounts posing as Israelis published 13,400 posts over two months, gaining 4.73 million views. The goal is to undermine trust in the elections, the government and the army by inciting discord.

The Spanish cyber-intelligence company Golden Owl has published a report exposing a large-scale Iranian influence operation on X (formerly Twitter) targeting Israel's elections scheduled for October 27. A network of at least 649 fake accounts posing as Israeli users published 13,400 posts and comments over two months (from August 11 to October 11), which gained 4.73 million views, 124,490 likes and 20,660 reposts. The main narratives included a conspiracy theory about betrayal within Israel during the October 7 massacre, attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the claim that Israel is weak. According to the report, the accounts operated from infrastructure linked to Iran and through VPNs in a number of countries. The operation's goal was not to persuade people to vote for a specific party, but to undermine voters' trust in the government, the army, the country's future and the elections themselves, deepening existing social divisions.