A bombshell new report from Time Magazine published Tuesday has uncovered that a covert social media initiative designed to undermine U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement with Iran was orchestrated by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former 2020 campaign manager.
The operation was launched under a broader contract between Parscale’s private strategic firm Clock Tower X and global advertising giant Havas, which was acting on behalf of the Israeli government. While the public mandate for the work framed it as an effort to counter antisemitism online, Time’s investigation reveals the unstated core goal was to stop rising criticism of Israel among young American conservative audiences.
Parscale exploited his senior leadership role as chief strategy officer at Salem Media Group, a conservative and Christian-focused national media conglomerate, to narrow his targeting to right-leaning young voters across the United States. He also tapped into a network of social media companies he founded or controls, including digital strategy firm Campaign Nucleus and influencer marketing platform Influenceable, to recruit conservative content creators and online personalities to join the campaign.
In private encrypted group chats, these recruited influencers received guided messaging instructions tailored for major platforms including X, Instagram and TikTok, all crafted to align with Israeli government interests. Content creators were paid based on the performance of their posts, with compensation tied directly to the number of impressions and user engagement their content generated, according to Time’s reporting.
Previous influencer campaigns run through Influenceable structured payments with a $2,250 base fee per post, plus an additional $1 for every 1,000 views earned, capped at two million views per post. Under this payment structure, top-performing influencers could walk away with as much as $4,250 for a single social media post.
One high-profile conservative pro-Israel commentator linked to the campaign is Eyal Yakoby, who boasts 300,000 followers on X and has appeared as a guest on major U.S. outlets including Fox News, CNN and The Washington Post. Yakoby, a vocal public supporter of Israel, maintains his work is focused on combating antisemitism, but he has also spread unsubstantiated claims tying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to the Muslim Brotherhood. When contacted by Time, Yakoby denied ever being paid to promote opinions he did not personally hold.
Parscale committed to delivering a minimum of 50 million monthly digital impressions through the campaign, with a stated goal of shifting how major artificial intelligence platforms including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini characterize Israel and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. For this work, the Israeli government pays Clock Tower X $1.5 million every month. All of Parscale’s work for the Israeli government has been formally registered as required under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, a public disclosure requirement for foreign political actors operating in the United States. Prior reporting from The Intercept in May 2026 first revealed that Parscale’s firm had been hired by Israel for $6 million in September 2025, before signing a subsequent $15 million contract with Havas.
While the campaign itself has been active for months, Tuesday’s Time report carries new significance because it confirms that a close former ally of President Trump was actively working to sink a core foreign policy initiative of the Trump administration. The magazine notes that U.S. officials had already observed a coordinated wave of anti-ceasefire rhetoric on social media, though they had not previously confirmed the origin of the coordinated effort.
Measuring the campaign’s overall effectiveness remains an open question. Israel has seen consistent erosion in public support across all demographic groups in the U.S. since it launched its military campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel. The Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians to date, and widespread criticism of the operation as a humanitarian catastrophe has shifted public opinion across the political spectrum.
Even prominent conservative voices have broken with the Israeli government in recent months: long-time mainstream conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon have both publicly condemned Israel for dragging the United States into unnecessary conflict in the Middle East. Conservative comedian and podcaster Dave Smith has also built a large new audience for his sharp criticism of U.S. intervention in the region and Israel’s military actions in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Polling reflects this shifting opinion: a Quinnipiac University poll released last month found that 60 percent of U.S. voters believe potential U.S. military action against Iran would not be worth the cost.
This reporting was aggregated from original independent coverage by Middle East Eye, a publication that produces on-the-ground, independent reporting and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.