The Israeli government is paying to support a network of front websites that are being used in attempts to manipulate popular search engines and drum up support for the war in Iran, a Washington Examiner review found.
In August 2025, Israel entered into a multimillion-dollar contract with Clock Tower X, a consultancy run by former Trump campaign adviser Brad Parscale, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act records maintained by the Department of Justice.
Since then, Parscale’s company, aided by scores of staff he hired as subcontractors from the major communications firm Convergence Media, has established at least 11 front websites that publish favorable information about Israel and the war in Iran.
While the sites appear to be independent organizations at first glance, all include statements that disclose they are run by Clock Tower X “on behalf of the State of Israel.” Documents filed with the DOJ indicate this network of websites has published hundreds of pages’ worth of articles in the weeks since Israel and the United States launched their initial strikes against Iran.
Clock Tower X’s contract, as submitted to the DOJ, states that the Israeli government’s money must be used to fund the “deployment of websites and content to deliver [generative pre-trained transformer] framing results on GPT conversations” and “monthly search engine optimization campaigns.” Additionally, the contract stipulates that Clock Tower X’s performance will be evaluated based on how effectively its content achieves “sentiment movement” among the individuals it reaches.
When reached by the Washington Examiner, Parscale confirmed that he was using front websites to manipulate search engine results and popular artificial intelligence chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Parscale defended the contract and emphasized the transparency with which he has carried it out.
“You didn’t ‘uncover’ anything,” Parscale told the Washington Examiner. “The entities and activities you reference are explicitly disclosed in our FARA filings. Our filings are publicly available and make clear we are committed to transparency and compliance with the law.”
Despite being paid over $1 million per month by Israel, Parscale denied that his efforts constituted a “foreign influence campaign.”
“We are identifying and addressing demonstrably false claims by Iran and amplified by outlets that fail to vet the information properly,” he continued. “The facts we publish are fully aligned with longstanding U.S. policy, including the current administration’s support for Israel as America’s primary ally in the region.”
Ambitious foreign lobbying
Individuals seeking to influence politics on behalf of foreign governments sometimes do so without registering with the DOJ, in violation of the law. Many of America’s adversaries, such as China, have been accused of using front groups to advance their interests within the U.S. While Parscale and, by extension, Israel, have operated with a relatively high degree of transparency that is not ubiquitous among foreign agents, it hasn’t been enough to satisfy some critics.
“The current lobbying efforts by the Israeli government to influence American public policy and American public opinion are anything but normal lobbying activity,” Craig Holman, a government ethics and lobbying expert at Public Citizen, told the Washington Examiner. “Israel has launched a massive lobbying blitz employing every means possible to shape U.S. public policies, from direct lobbying contacts with Congress and the administration to indirect propaganda to influence American public opinion to secretive efforts to shape the public dialogue by employing social media influencers to promote Israeli interests. Manipulating search engine results is just another step in that lobbying campaign — a step I have never heard of taken before by any foreign or domestic lobbying interest.”
Despite all being run by Clock Tower X on behalf of Israel, each of the 11 websites purports to possess a unique identity.
These include Econora, which is focused on U.S.-Israeli economic cooperation; Innovascope, a website dedicated to discussing Israeli technological innovation; Paxpoint, a blog page highlighting “Israel’s ongoing commitment to peace and coexistence”; Compassion Pulse, which shares stories critical of Israel’s enemies that depict the human costs of war; Allyvia, a purported organization that presents arguments as to why the U.S.-Israeli alliance directly benefits Americans; Culturavia, which is dedicated to showcasing cultural links between the U.S. and Israel; Cognitura, a website claiming to be a “research and education platform” exploring how radical groups recruit members; Justorium, a law-focused pro-Israel blog; Fact Signal, a pro-Israel fact-checking website; Feeding You Fiction, another fact-checking website; and the new Truth About Iran, a page dedicated to criticism of Iran.
Clock Tower X also maintains channels on YouTube and Rumble, neither of which has attracted many viewers.
Clock Tower X and Israel’s expectations for the campaign are ambitious. The contract between the entities states that the former’s paid media campaigns must deliver a minimum of 50 million impressions per month. It is unclear how successful Clock Tower X has been in its endeavors. The Washington Examiner, for instance, wasn’t able to get ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Claude to cite websites from Clock Tower X’s network through prompts.
Claude uses third-party infrastructure to scrape the internet for information, which can lead to results varying at any given time, Anthropic shared with the Washington Examiner. To address issues that can arise from this, the tech firm continued, Anthropic regularly reviews instances in which low-quality sources are presented to users and works to lower the probability of future occurrences.
High expectations and large bills
Israel’s most recent contract with Clock Tower X disclosed that it paid the firm a $6 million lump sum, plus an additional $3 million to be used as an “advertising budget.” The Israeli government was initially paying Clock Tower X $1.5 million per month.
A few common threads have emerged across the network of Israeli state-backed sites maintained by Clock Tower X. Somewhat ironically, many of the articles posted on these websites deride foreign influence efforts — specifically those allegedly aimed at denigrating Israel.
“No, it is not ironic to point out foreign disinformation while working to correct it,” Parscale told the Washington Examiner. “Ensuring that accurate information is represented in search and AI systems is ethical and critical, given how these systems now shape public understanding.”
Other common angles covered by the Clock Tower X network include Iran’s history of training terrorists, the negative affect the war in Iran is having on top American adversaries such as Russia and China, reports of human rights abuses in Iran, the purported necessity of the war, allegations that Iran provoked the war, and the possibility that America’s intervention in Iran could lead to democratization in the country.
Beyond attempts to promote its message through search engines and large language models, Israel’s contract with Clock Tower X also includes a provision that could help cement its preferred narratives in American news media.
MIDDLE EASTERN NATIONS LOBBIED CONGRESS TO SHAPE DEFENSE BILL, WON CONCESSIONS
Clock Tower X, per its contract, is expected to facilitate the “integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels.” In addition to running Clock Tower X, Parscale also works as an executive at Salem Media Network, providing a relatively direct pathway for that expectation to be met.
OpenAI, Convergence Media, Salem Media Network, and the Israeli Embassy did not respond to requests for comment. Google declined to comment.