Iran reportedly could be behind an anonymous “Mapping Project” website that pinpoints locations of Jewish or Zionist communal spaces and organizations, as well as law enforcement agencies in the northeastern United States, to “expose and isolate” supporters of Israel.
The Mapping Project was widely covered in 2022 and largely focused on potential violent attacks against U.S. Jews, Zionists, and Jewish organizations in Boston.
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A marcher carries an Israeli flag in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
(Photo: AP / Michael Dwyer)
According to the Zachor legal institute, "there is considerable evidence that Iranian elements may be involved in creating the Mapping Project,” pointing to the Iranian-owned Press TV outlet calling for the replication of the Mapping Project across the United States. Washington sanctioned Press TV in 2021 and seized its website citing its use as a front for Iran’s regime to “subvert U.S. democratic processes.”
The Mapping Project includes “a disturbing and antisemitic call to ‘dismantle’ and ‘disrupt’ most of Boston’s Jewish community and concludes with a thinly veiled threat that 'every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted,'” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
Zachor noted that “more than two-thirds of the 505 ‘targets’ featured on the website are not Jewish institutions, but rather U.S. security institutions, including the exact locations of 271 police stations, nine U.S. military bases and installations, and offices of Homeland Security, the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] the Secret Service, and U.S. government-linked weapons manufacturers – all of which are pinpointed on a single interactive map.”
The legal group added that the “focus placed on the American security apparatus indicates that the map is not domestic in origin, but might be a product of a foreign agenda and the chief suspect is the Islamic Republic of Iran.”