April 13, 2025: Disinformation and propaganda have been used for thousands of years to control and manipulate public opinion. Even kings and dictators use these methods to control their subjects and avoid costly rebellions or periods of unrest. Currently the Middle East is where these methods flourish. Except for Israel, there are no other democracies in the region. Yet everyone in the Middle East relies on controlling information for political survival.

Israel has been using Information War, via the Internet, a lot more, and a lot more aggressively than anyone else in the region. There have long been many pro-Israel Internet users who have been very active on message boards where Israel is discussed, especially when Israel is being disrespected with false or distorted information. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has recruited some of these internet activists to work in coordination with foreign policy initiatives, to deliver focused and more compelling messages in support of Israel.

Israel is also making greater use of its large number of Arab speaking Jewish citizens, most of them descendants of Jews driven out of Arab countries in the late 1940s. These net activists visit Arab language message boards, and provide support for Israel, or at least deflate the more common lies and myths spread about Israel and Jews. Israeli intelligence has also done well by setting up Arab language websites to take advantage of animosities within the Arab world. In Lebanon, that meant anti-Hezbollah sites, or fake Israeli-operated pro-Hezbollah sites that spread harmful Hezbollah disinformation (black propaganda). The same tactic is used against Iran and Islamic radicals in general. Such sites are also used to recruit spies in Arab countries.

All of this must, of course, be done covertly. Not the sort of thing you can openly boast about. But it's been going on for some time, and is now going to be an even more common event on the Internet. These tactics play a role in controlling Arab public opinion in areas where Hamas and Islamic terrorists are active.

Israel developed software to infect and damage Iranian networks and strategic systems. The impact was so serious and the rumors and gossip inside Iran so widespread and detailed that the Iranian government admitted that there had been an attack but that it was being dealt with. In Iran, that means the government has a major problem and they would rather not reveal any details.

Over a decade ago the government warned Iranians to brace themselves for more Cyber War attacks by the U.S., Britain and Israel. This came after the U.S. admitted that several successful Cyber War attacks on Iran were indeed the product of a joint American Israeli effort. Iran always includes Britain in these foreign conspiracies because Britain has been successfully interfering with Iranian diplomacy for several centuries and is greatly resented by most Iranians.

The Cyber War attacks were all coming from the U.S. and Israel and their Cyber War offensive turned out to be a huge undertaking with many of these secret software programs going undiscovered inside Iran for years. When these programs were discovered, the subsequent investigation usually revealed that the infection had been active for several years. Some of these efforts, like Stuxnet, were seen as a major defeat for Iran, which had operated a successful smuggling and money laundering program for decades because of their ability to keep the details secret. With the Stuxnet revelations, it became clear that much of that secrecy was long gone because of the American/Israeli Internet espionage/sabotage campaign.

Iran struck back with cruder and more readily available cyber weapons like hacking Western websites or shutting some down with DDOS attacks. Iran has a lot of smart, patriotic and well-educated people who don’t have good jobs. A serious Cyber War capability was possible and Iran tried to create one. This effort was crippled when many of the key tech staff realized that the Iranian government was delusional as well as corrupt and incompetent, and that their best option was to emigrate. The government tried to discourage this sort of thing but cannot prevent young Iranians, especially the better-educated ones, from getting out. There is not really much of a market for well-educated and capable young Iranians when the government is largely responsible for the poor performance of the economy and Iranians don’t need a college degree to figure that out. To make perceptions even more toxic, there were continuing government sponsored exhortations to destroy Israel followed by a growing number of Israeli responses like the 2018 Mossad heist of Iranian nuclear program documents and numerous air attacks on Iranian forces in Syria. Then Israel struck with another major Cyber War attack exposing Iranian assassination and terror attack plans in Europe and the Americas.

The Middle East information wars continue, but in most cases the details often take several years to surface and reveal what actually happened.