Iran Hawks’ Hacking Claims Designed to Distract Americans, Set Stage for New Regional War
© AP Photo / Alex Brandon
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After nearly a year of efforts to taunt, provoke and intimidate Iran into a full-on regional war in the Middle East amid the Gaza crisis, Iran hawks in Washington have turned to a new strategy, accusing Tehran of interfering in the upcoming US presidential election. A respected Middle Eastern affairs scholar explains what’s behind the new approach.
The FBI, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence formally accused Iran of attempting to hack the Trump and Biden-Harris presidential campaigns on Monday.
The new allegations, which came weeks after a series of reports in US media citing “anonymous intelligence sources” claiming that Iran was plotting to assassinate Donald Trump, or to hack his presidential campaign, were not accompanied with any evidence.
“As the lead for threat response, the FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible. We will not tolerate foreign efforts to influence or interfere with our elections, including the targeting of American political campaigns,” the US intel agencies said in a joint statement.
Iran calmly rejected the US’s “unsubstantiated” and evidence-free claims.
“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing. As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interference with the US presidential election,” the country’s permanent mission to the United Nations said in a statement.
“Should the US government genuinely believe in the validity of its claims, it should furnish us with the pertinent evidence – if any, to which we will respond accordingly,” the mission added.
Dangerous Distraction Action
“There is little doubt that the rhetoric itself has more impact than the substantiation of these accusations,” Dr. Mehmet Rakipoglu, a political scientist and international affairs observer and assistant professor at Turkiye’s Mardin Artuklu University, told Sputnik.
“Creating artificial agendas such as [the Iran hacking claims] intensifies hostilities between the parties involved. This accusation seems to be aimed at diverting attention from Israel's actions in Gaza and refocusing it on the US election process,” Rakipoglu added, pointing out that Tel Aviv has been bogged down by accusations of engaging in genocide against Gaza’s civilian population, while proving unable to defeat Hamas militarily.
“It is already clear that the American public is deeply divided, regardless of whether there is an alleged Iranian attack. It is not Iran or any other external actor that is responsible for these divisions, but rather the US administrations themselves,” the academic said.
Rakipoglu stressed that, conveniently for the accusers, there’s virtually no way to verify the US intelligence agencies’ allegations, or conversely, prove that or Iran, or any other country, has interfered in the US election.
In some sense, the claims against Iran this election cycle are reminiscent of similar allegations made against Russia ahead of, during and following the 2016 vote, Rakipoglu said.
“While the US propagated a narrative of Russian interference during the 2016 elections, it continued to lose influence over time. It seems that the current accusation against Iran serves the same purpose as the allegations against Russian interference in 2016,” the observer said.
If that’s the case, it could signal a dangerous turn for Iran, and the Middle East in general. The 2016 Russian meddling allegations sparked a deep downturn in Russia-US relations, with the Russiagate conspiracy hounding Donald Trump throughout his term in office, blocking his ability to restore any semblance of normal ties with Moscow, and ultimately manufacturing consent among a substantial portion of the US electorate for the NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine which began in 2022.
