The website of a major Israeli newspaper was targeted by hackers a day before the anniversary of the 2020 killing of a top Iranian general in a U.S. drone strike.
The attack on the Jerusalem Post’s website on January 2 replaced content with an image showing a missile falling from a fist bearing a ring long associated with Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed two years ago in the drone strike.
The image included an exploding target designed to look like an Isreali nuclear research center near the city of Dimona. The center is associated with Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program.
The Jerusalem Post acknowledged the hack on Twitter.
“We are aware of the apparent hacking of our website, alongside a direct threat to Israel,” the English-language newspaper said.
It is unclear if the hackers were from Iran, supporters from outside the country, or if they were state-sponsored, the Jerusalem Post said.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli government.
The Twitter account of another Israeli media outlet, Maariv Online, was similarly targeted on January 2. The tweet has been removed.
Hundreds of demonstrators turned out in Baghdad on January 1 to mark the anniversary of the attack that killed Soleimani, who headed the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Hamid al-Muhandis.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the January 3, 2020, strike in response to a spate of attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq. Soleimani was considered a main architect of Iran’s Middle East military strategy, and his killing ratcheted up tensions between Iran and the United States.
Five days after Soleimani’s death, Iran fired missiles at an Iraqi air base hosting U.S. forces and another base near the Iraqi city of Irbil.
On December 31, Iran’s Foreign Ministry posted on Twitter that “the U.S. government bears definitive international responsibility” for the killing, which it denounces as “a terrorist attack.” It said “the White House is now responsible,” seeming to refer to the administration of Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden.
Although the U.S.-led international coalition announced the end of its “combat mission” in Iraq in December, some 2,500 U.S. and 1,000 coalition troops remain in the country to advise and train Iraqi security forces.
