Iran linked to US election disinformation campaign: What we know
The Iranian government has been tied to an assassination plot on US soil and a hack of the Trump campaign, both of which Tehran has denied.
Iran is working to influence the US presidential election and spreading disinformation through a series of fake outlets, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
What happened: The newspaper reported that Iran is engaged in an effort to sway the US presidential election. The Islamic Republic is seeking to damage former US President Donald Trump’s campaign, but has also targeted his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and current President Joe Biden, according to the Times.
“Iran’s efforts appear intended to undermine former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign to return to the White House,” stated the report, which cited US and Iranian officials. “They have also targeted President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting a wider goal of sowing internal discord and discrediting the democratic system in the United States more broadly in the eyes of the world.”
The Iranian network includes social media users who “push Iran’s views,” as well as hackers and front companies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the report.
The Iranian government did not immediately comment.
The New York Times identified the Savannah Time, NioThinker and Westland Sun news outlets as part of the operation. The websites have posted content related to the US presidential race and the Middle East recently. A Wednesday article by NioThinker referred to the “democratic party’s deafening silence on Palestine.”
Savannah Time published a piece on Tuesday referring to Harris’ recent interview with CNN as an “evasive dance.” A day earlier, the outlet ran an article on Trump titled “Why Conservatives Must Reckon with the Former President’s Character.”
Why it matters: The New York Times report follows other instances of Iran being accused of interference in US politics. In August, US intelligence agencies backed the Trump campaign’s assertion that it had been targeted in a hack.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” said the agencies in a statement. “This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC [intelligence community] attributes to Iran.”
The Trump campaign said earlier in August that it had been targeted by Iranian hackers.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations denied involvement in response to the agencies.
”Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing," the mission said in a statement. "As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election.”
The same month, the Department of Justice charged Pakistani national Asif Merchant in connection to an alleged plot to assassinate a US politician or official. Merchant allegedly has “close ties to Iran,” according to the US government.
“This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Department of Justice statement.
The Iranian mission to the UN denied involvement.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the statement that the Justice Department “has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani.”
Soleimani, who led the IRGC’s Quds Force, was killed in a US strike in Baghdad in early 2020 during Trump’s presidency. Iran has long vowed vengeance for his death.
In reference to Merchant’s alleged assassination plot, the Iranian mission said, “It is evident that the modus operandi in question contradicts the Iranian government’s policy of legally prosecuting the murderer of General Soleimani.”
