WASHINGTON — US intelligence officials said Monday they were confident Iran was responsible for the hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaignportraying the cyberattack as part of a brazen and broader attempt by Tehran to meddle in US politics and potentially influence the election outcome.
The assessment by the FBI and other federal agencies marked the first time the U.S. government has laid blame for hacks that have again heightened the threat of foreign interference in elections and underscored how Iran, alongside more sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China, remains a top priority. In addition to the Trump campaign, officials believe Iran also attempted to hack Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Federal officials say the hacking and similar activities are intended to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of elections that Iran considers “particularly important in terms of the impact they may have on its national security interests,” officials said.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, particularly with respect to influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” said the statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the allegations as “baseless and without any standing,” saying Iran had neither the motive nor the intention to interfere in the election. It challenged the US to provide evidence, saying that if the US does, “we will respond accordingly.”
The FBI statement was released at a time of high tensions between Washington and Tehran as the US hopes to stop or contain a threatened retaliatory attack on Israel. the assassination of Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. In addition, there was an Israeli attack in southern Beirut last month killed Hezbollah’s top commanderbut while Tehran and Iran-backed Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate, they have yet to carry out any attacks as diplomatic efforts and ceasefire negotiations in Gaza continue in Qatar.
The U.S. did not provide details about how it concluded that Iran was responsible, nor did it describe the nature of the information that may have been stolen from the Trump campaign. But it said the intelligence community believed that “the Iranians used social engineering and other efforts to gain access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties.”
At least three Biden-Harris campaign staffers were targeted with phishing emails, but investigators have found no evidence the attempt was successful, The Associated Press reported last week.
“Such activities, including theft and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process. It is important to note that this approach is not new. Iran and Russia have used these tactics not only in the United States during this and previous federal election cycles, but also in other countries around the world,” the statement said.
US officials have been extra vigilant in recent election campaigns for foreign influence campaigns and outright interference, such as in 2016, when Russian military intelligence services hacked the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and organized the publication of politically damaging emails via the WikiLeaks website.
Iran has recently emerged as an aggressive threat to the U.S. election. In 2020, Iran waged an influence campaign aimed at harming Trump’s re-election bid, according to U.S. intelligence officials, that was likely approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was the subject of an unusual evening press conference with FBI Director Christopher Wray and other officials.
US officials have also expressed concern about Tehran’s attempts to retaliate for an attack on an Iranian general in 2020 that was ordered by Trump.
The Trump campaign announced on August 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news organizations — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — leaked confidential material from the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal details about what they received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be an investigative dossier the campaign had apparently compiled on the Republican vice presidential nominee, a senator from Ohio. JD VanceThe document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
The US government’s assessment is consistent with the findings of private companies.
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced a report issued about Iranian agents’ attempts to interfere in this year’s election. The report said Iran had posed as activists and created fake news targeting voters on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The report also cited an instance in June of an Iranian military intelligence agency “sending a spear-phishing email to a senior presidential campaign official from a compromised email account belonging to a former senior adviser.”
In a separate report, Google said that Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guards has attempted to infiltrate the personal email accounts of about a dozen people connected to President Joe Biden and Trump since May.
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Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Editor at the United Nations, contributed to this report.
