The US intelligence community has “observed” Iran trying to influence the 2024 election — and keep former President Donald Trump from a second term in the White House, according to a Monday unclassified briefing.
An official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that intelligence agencies have “observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States.”
The briefing, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, made clear that Trump administration would escalate those tensions since officials “haven’t observed a shift in Iran’s preferences” since before the 2020 election, the official added, when Iran was known to have opposed Trump’s re-election.
Russian influence campaigns ahead of the November election are still seen as a primary threat, though the briefing showed a change in Tehran’s strategy.
In 2022, Twitter, now X, permanently suspended an account linked to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei after it promoted a video depicting an assassination of former President Donald Trump.
During the 2020 election, members of an Iranian hacking group also accessed confidential US voting records to spook at least 100,000 Democratic voters by sending out threatening emails under the guise of being members of the far-right group the Proud Boys.
Officials had previously described Iran as more of a “chaos agent” in the 2024 race between Trump, 78, and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, 59.
Now, Iran is spreading “disinformation” through “vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills” in addition to clandestine efforts to put a thumb on the scales for Harris.
That was before US officials came forward about an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump that led to increased Secret Service resources for the former president’s security detail.
It was also before the 45th president was nearly killed by Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who opened fire at a Trump campaign event in Butler, Pa., striking Trump in the right ear, fatally shooting another rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, 50, and wounding two more, David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
FBI Director Christopher Wary told the House Judiciary Committee last week that an investigation into the shooter has “not found any evidence of any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic,” but confirmed the ongoing threat from Tehran.
“We need to recognize the brazenness of the Iranian regime — including right here in the United States — and I expect that we’re going to see more of it,” FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in the hearing.
In a hearing with the House Oversight Committee two days before, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) had quipped about “an Iranian assassin” being far “more capable than a 20-year-old.”
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines in a statement earlier this month confirmed that anti-Israel protests nationwide on college campuses, which Republicans have unanimously condemned, had also received financial backing from Iran, along with other influence agents “posing as activists online” and “seeking to encourage protests.”
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson also said earlier this month that US intelligence had been “tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration.”
“These threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani,” she added, naming the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in 2020. “We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority.”
The Secret Service has since warned the Trump campaign not to hold outdoor rallies, sources told CNN, which first reported the plot.