Iran is now the biggest foreign threat to the 2024 elections
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Iran, not Russia, is proving to be the biggest nation-state threat to the U.S. presidential election in November.
Why it matters: Russia and Iran have grown more brazen and hungrier in their attacks on the U.S. elections, officials say, and the final stretch of the presidential election could see even more chaos.
Driving the news: Google researchers released a report Wednesday confirming that Iran-backed hackers targeted both the Trump and Biden campaigns in a phishing attack.
- The FBI is actively investigating the Trump campaign's claims that Iran hacked its systems and is leaking stolen materials to U.S. news outlets.
The big picture: Foreign adversaries have a growing appetite for targeting the U.S. elections amid a tense geopolitical environment, Sean Minor, team lead for Recorded Future's influence operations research, said during a webinar this week.
- U.S. involvement in several high-profile global conflicts — including the war in Ukraine, tensions between China and Taiwan, and the Israel-Hamas war — has put a major target on the presidential race.
- Iran has started using influence operations to undermine the Trump campaign, the U.S. intelligence community warned last month.
Flashback: Iran has shown a growing interest in targeting former President Donald Trump and the U.S. government since January 2020, when a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
- During the 2020 presidential election, two Iranian hackers stole confidential U.S. voter information from at least one election website and posed as members of the Proud Boys to send threats to Democrats, according to indictment documents.
- And in 2022, Iranian hackers were seen using similar tactics to target voters in the month before the November elections, according to an FBI alert.
The intrigue: Iran now appears to be following the playbook Russia crafted in 2016 for targeting a U.S. presidential campaign, James Turgal, a former FBI assistant director, tells Axios.
- "It is almost an exact blueprint of what the Russians were doing in 2016," says Turgal, who is now the vice president of cyber risk at Optiv.
- And Iran has been working more closely with the Russian government since the invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago — suggesting they could have traded notes.
- "That's not a coincidence that we're now seeing really active cyber actions and cyber threats that mirror Russian [tactics]," Turgal says.
Threat level: Iran is known for a loud, chaotic style of foreign interference that typically doesn't emerge until the last month of the U.S. election cycle.
- But both the killing of Soleimani and Trump's years-long-run as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee gave Iran more time to prepare and pursue a more sophisticated hack-and-leak approach, similar to Russia's.
What we're watching: None of the publications that received apparently leaked Trump campaign materials have published them. Officials also haven't confirmed that Iran was behind those leaks.
- But if Iran was behind the leaks, their hackers will likely be motivated to find other means to publish the documents, Turgal says.
- "Strap in tight because it's going to get weird."
