Intel Director: Iran Attempting to Undercut Trump Campaign

As Kamala Harris launches her presidential campaign with overt assistance from fawning media, another entity continues more covert efforts to undermine her opponent Donald Trump, just as it did when Joe Biden was Trump’s 2020 opponent: Iran.  

That’s according to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who acknowledged that, “As I noted in testimony to the Congress in May, Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts.”  

She added that Iran was adapting and improving upon its 2020 campaign that “intended to undercut the reelection prospects of former President Trump”:  

Tehran’s efforts to attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 US election and Iranian officials’ preference that former President Trump not be reelected were driven in part by a perception that the regime faced acute threats from the US.  Iran’s election influence efforts were primarily focused on sowing discord in the United States and exacerbating societal tensions – including by creating or amplifying social media content that criticized former President Trump – probably because they believed that this advanced Iran’s longstanding objectives and undercut the prospects for the former President’s reelection without provoking retaliation.  

According to that National Intelligence Council report, Iran’s tactics included sending threatening emails to American citizens, including a “highly targeted operation” that “sent threatening, spoofed emails purporting to be from the Proud Boys group to Democratic voters in multiple US states.”  Even more disturbingly, “Iranian cyber actors exploited a known vulnerability to compromise US entities associated with reelection infrastructure as a part of a broad targeting effort across multiple sectors worldwide.”  

Iran’s reasons for preferring Biden or Harris to Trump are obvious.  

Upon entering office in 2017, President Trump boldly relocated America’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, then proceeded to impose his “maximum pressure” strategy that quickly depleted Iranian oil export revenues from $53 billion in 2018 to just $12.7 billion by 2020.  As he drove Iran toward insolvency, Trump also ordered the attack that finally killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qasem Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops.  Trump also achieved Israeli-Arab rapprochement via the Abraham Accords, contrary to Iranian interests.  

In contrast, the Biden/Harris administration offers a vastly friendlier alternative for Iran.  Its shameful behavior just last week while Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress offers a perfect example.  

The Constitution specifies few formal responsibilities for a vice president, which explains why former Vice President John Nance Garner famously quipped, “The vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm spit.”  Among the formal duties that the Constitution does assign to a vice president, however, is presiding over the United States Senate.  Instead of fulfilling that duty and showing public respect to our isolated ally Israel last week, Harris boycotted Netanyahu’s speech.  Instead, Harris prioritized a college sorority event in Indiana while Netanyahu spoke.  That’s how much Harris values Israel and our alliance with the lone democratic state in the Middle East.  

That latest episode merely continued an ongoing hostility toward Israel and bizarre favoritism toward Iran.  Upon entering office, the Biden/Harris administration reversed Trump’s maximum pressure effort against Iran, which quickly replenished Iran’s incoming oil revenues, which in turn allowed it to increase its sponsorship of terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.  

This week, Israel successfully targeted leaders of both groups, including one hit inside Iran itself.  Naturally, the Iran-friendly Biden/Harris brain trust discouraged Israel from taking that action.  In their minds, killing the leader of the group that inflicted the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was apparently an “escalation” to be discouraged.  

As Nioh Berg tweeted, “It’s as if Bibi Netanyahu spoke to Kamala for 5 minutes, realized how bad the next 4 years could get, and gave himself a January deadline.”  

Biden/Harris administration apologists may attempt to parallel Iran’s campaign to influence American elections to earlier Russian efforts to do the same.  The obvious distinction, however, is that Biden/Harris policies have demonstrably benefitted and empowered Iran.  Conversely, as Trump himself pointed out during his June 27 debate with Biden, Russia didn’t take a square inch of foreign territory during his presidency.  During the Obama and Biden presidencies, Putin went on the march.  Moreover, in 2018 Trump targeted hundreds of Russian mercenaries who threatened American troops in Syria.  

In any event, it’s important that Americans understand Iran’s threat to American elections, and where their motivations lie.  Such knowledge can inform electoral choices in an increasingly precarious international environment for both America and its loyal allies.

Timothy H. Lee is Senior Vice President of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom.

Reprinted with Permission from CFIF – By Timothy H. Lee

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.