Trump Blames Iran’s Involvement In Hacking His Electoral Campaign
Current presidential candidate, Donald Trump blames Iran for being involved in hacking his electoral campaign. He claimed this one day after Microsoft reported that foreign entities have attempted to meddle with the 2024 US presidential elections.
On Saturday, Trump said that the stealing of their most sensitive information and distributing it to foreign sources is not acceptable. He said that it is highly likely that Iranian actors are involved in stealing his electoral campaign.
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Microsoft disclosed that the “foreign malign influence” in the 2024 electoral campaign started off with a slow pace in the beginning. Nevertheless, the pace had been observed to fasten in the last six months. It would be possible due to Russian operations, Microsoft supposed, but now it seems to be coming from Iran.
The details about the hack elucidate that the emails were received first on July 22 by a sender with an anonymous account. An AOL email account was taken as the source, detected as “Robert”.
It was suspected that the individual was a research dossier on Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president. On February 23rd, the paper was saved, which is around five months before Trump announced JD Vance as his running mate.
Although there is no clear evidence of Iran taking any part in such involvement, however, reports from Microsoft created a hunch against Iran. Microsoft reported an instance where the Iranian military possibly sent a spear-phishing email to one of the VIP presidential officials that contained a compromised email account. The email account had a connection with a former senior advisor.
Why Trump blames Iran; there’s a reason
The spokesperson of Trump’s campaign, Steve Cheung, put the same blame for the hack on Iranian actors saying, “foreign sources hostile to the United States”.
The document related to JD Vance that was saved on 23 February was testified to as “illegal” by Cheung. Mr Chueng said that it was obtained through illegal means and therefore, gives rise to the chaos for the smooth democratic process that the United States aims at.
Cheung also emphasised that Iranian actors know that “President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House”. However, any media or news person making interventions in government papers and communication for the purpose of supporting the enemies are doing exactly the same, “exactly what they want”.
The National Security Council’s spokesperson also confirmed the same, mentioning that they take foreign meddling “extremely seriously” as they cannot put their country’s safety at stake. The National Security Council condemns such acts and knows how to take immediate actions against such undermining.
Upon asking about Iran’s involvement and whether there is any truth in Trump blames, Iran disregarded all the arguments from the US. It said, “We do not accord any credence to such reports. The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbours any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election”.
Still, Iran’s adamantness is not taken with confidence as there had been previous suspects about running a hacking campaign that had their origins in Iran. The campaign was aimed at adversaries located in the Middle East and other regions.
In the past, Tehran had also threatened Trump for the drone strike that took place in 2020. Tehran said it could’ve taken action against the killing of their prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Before the hacking of the electoral campaign, the US Justice Department took criminal charges off against a Pakistani citizen who they alleged to be involved in plotting assassination attempts against prominent political leaders in the United States. The plotting was assumed to be related to Trump’s bullet attack as well.
The court revealed Iran’s intention to attack Soleimani in order to exact retribution on everyone involved in undermining their authority.
