Daily Beast: “Almost immediately after the devastating Tuesday explosion that nearly destroyed Beirut and killed at least 137 people, a number of verified Twitter accounts linked to Saudi Arabia started firing off tweets blaming the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.”

“Within 24 hours, the hashtag ‘Hezbollah’s Ammonia Burns Beirut’ was trending, even though authorities and the group itself denies any involvement. Intelligence sources say that the disinformation is being generated and spread by four verified Saudi-linked accounts that have been active in recent years in disinformation campaigns designed to hurt Iranian interests. Marc Owen Jones, an author and assistant professor of Middle East studies at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar, told The Daily Beast by phone that it is coming primarily from a ‘core group of influencers’ who have verified Twitter accounts, meaning they should have been vetted by the social-media giant. In just 48 hours since the explosion, he has already found 14,000 interactions involving 9,870 unique accounts spreading lies. Before the Beirut explosion diverted their attention, many of these disinformation accounts were on a rampage against female journalists who were then targeted and essentially silenced out of fear to respond, he says. ‘This part of the general trope coming out of Saudi,’ he told The Daily Beast. ‘Obviously the impact of that is to create a vacuum of opposition voices, filled with government mouthpieces.'”