The Text Said "Friends for Peace." The Paper Trail Says Something Else.

The Texts

Jessica, a mother in Alabama, got a text on the evening of January 7: “Hi, this is John with Friends for Peace. We're gathering views on Israel today and would like to hear yours. Got a moment to chat?” Over the next three days, “John” walked her through a pro-Israel narrative, and when she mentioned getting her news from X, he warned her that accounts “pretending to be Gaza civilians” were spreading fake content — then sent a video from a channel called “Allies for Peace.”

No nonprofit called Friends for Peace, Partners in Peace, or Allies for Peace appears to exist. Reporters at Responsible Statecraft, who first documented the texts, couldn't find one either. In one exchange, the campaign itself admitted it “use[s] different names.”

Who's Behind Clock Tower X

What does exist is a public record. Every company running a foreign government's influence campaign inside the U.S. is legally required to disclose it to the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and that filing — FARA registration #7649 — is sitting on a federal server, open to anyone.

It names Clock Tower X LLC, a single-member Delaware LLC headquartered at 3745 Medina Road in Medina, Ohio, wholly owned by Bradley Parscale — Donald Trump's 2016 and 2020 presidential campaign manager. Filed September 18, 2025, it names Havas Media Germany GmbH, acting on behalf of the State of Israel, as the foreign principal. An early version of the filing named the State of Israel directly and was later amended to route through Havas — a correction the filer's own paperwork describes as an error in how the principal was named, not a change in who's funding the work.

What the Contract Actually Says

The attached contract, also filed with the government, describes the assignment in the government's own words: Clock Tower X would “provide strategic communications, planning, and media services in support of Havas' engagement by the State of Israel to develop and execute a nationwide campaign in the United States to combat antisemitism.” The Statement of Work sets out $1.5 million a month for four months, plus matching funds from the agency itself, and specifies concrete output: at least 100 original creative assets and 5,000 variants a month, at least 80 percent aimed at Gen Z audiences on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and podcasts, at least 50 million paid impressions a month, and integration into Salem Media Network — the conservative broadcaster where Parscale simultaneously serves as Chief Strategy Officer.

A separate line item covers monthly SEO campaigns through an AI platform called MarketBrew, and, more strikingly, “deployment of websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” — an explicit effort to shape how AI chatbots describe Israel and the war, not just search results or social feeds. Reporting later confirmed the ambition extended to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini specifically.

The Trump-Vance Rift Over Iran

That much is documented and undisputed. What's newer, and considerably higher-stakes, is what happened after the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire on June 17, 2026.

According to Time, which reviewed the FARA filings and interviewed officials on both sides, a senior U.S. official monitoring online reaction noticed something odd in the days after the ceasefire: influencers in Trump's own MAGA movement, who officials had expected to celebrate the deal, were instead attacking it in strikingly similar language and timing. Tracing the pattern, the official arrived at Parscale. Time reported that Clock Tower X won the Israel contract partly on “the perception that he remained close to Trump,” and that the Israeli Foreign Ministry's internal goal went beyond fighting antisemitism — an official told the magazine the real aim was “preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel.”

Vice President JD Vance, who had been leading the administration's Iran negotiations, described on The Joe Rogan Experience a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal” — without naming Parscale, but citing the Time story directly. Vance said influencers paid through that campaign had attacked both him and the talks personally.

“Claims that I attacked the [peace deal] or the Administration are false. I welcome professional journalists who examine the facts instead of drawing conclusions from speculation or manufactured connections. Everything I created and did is publicly disclosed through the FARA process. There isn't a single shred of evidence that I acted against the Administration.” — Brad Parscale, in an on-record statement

He told Time his effort began roughly three years ago, under the Biden administration, “because he saw a rise in Jewish hatred, not because of any government agenda,” and that “my goal has always been to strengthen relationships, not damage them.”

The White House told Time it was unaware of the campaign. A senior U.S. intelligence official was blunter about why it matters regardless of intent: “We're talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the President's view, or the views of others around him. It can't be dismissed as inconsequential by any means.” And Parscale's own client isn't happy either — an Israeli official told Time, on condition of anonymity, “We are p——ed at Brad Parscale. He was supposed to make things better. We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse.”

The Connective Tissue

None of this is illegal on its face. Foreign governments are permitted to fund U.S. public-relations campaigns; that's exactly what FARA registration exists to disclose. The friction point the record actually supports is narrower and more specific: the text messages sent to people like Jessica didn't identify Havas, Clock Tower X, or Israel at all — and a FARA attorney told Responsible Statecraft the messages themselves should carry that disclosure. Separately, whether a foreign-funded campaign nudged American political influencers against a sitting administration's own foreign-policy deal is now a live, on-the-record dispute between a sitting vice president and the man running it, not an unverified rumor.

What connects the two threads — the texts and the Iran rift — is Clock Tower X itself. The FARA filing's stated purpose was combating antisemitism among Gen Z Americans; the texting campaign RS documented targeted exactly that demographic method (unsolicited outreach, curated video links, a “listening ear” script); and the same filing's monthly deliverables — audience segmentation, sentiment analysis, distribution through Salem Media and paid social — are the identical tools Time's sourcing says were later pointed at MAGA-aligned influencers during the Iran ceasefire fallout. It's one operation with one government contract, aimed at two audiences six months apart.