DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iran has emerged as a dual concern for the United States as the presidential campaign draws to a close.
Prosecutors allege that the Iranian government hacked people connected to the election and attempted to steal information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign. And U.S. officials have accused him of plotting to kill Trump and other former officials.
Assassination plots and hacking are not new strategies for Iran.
Iran recognized the value and danger of hacking in the early 2000s, when the Stuxnet virus, allegedly deployed by Israel and the United States, attempted to damage Iran’s nuclear program. Since then, hackers believed to be involved in state-related activities have targeted the Trump campaign, Iranian expatriates, and domestic government officials.
The history of assassinations goes back even further. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran killed or abducted people it considered enemies living outside the country.
A look back at Iran’s history of targeting its enemies:
history of hacking
For many, Iran’s actions can be traced back to the emergence of the Stuxnet computer virus. Stuxnet, released in the 2000s, infiltrated the control unit of a uranium enrichment centrifuge at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, increasing the speed of the centrifuge and eventually causing it to self-destruct.
Iranian scientists initially thought a mechanical error caused the damage. Ultimately, however, Iran removed the affected equipment and sought its own ways to attack its adversaries online.
A 2020 report from Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies quipped that “Iran had an excellent teacher in the new art of cyberwarfare.”
This was acknowledged by the National Security Agency in documents leaked to The Intercept in 2015, which investigated a cyberattack by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that destroyed the hard drives of Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. . Iran is suspected of carrying out similar attacks known as Shamoun in 2012 and 2017.
“Iran, which was the victim of a similar cyberattack against its oil industry in April 2012, has demonstrated a clear ability to learn from other countries’ capabilities and actions,” the document states.
Domestic considerations were also taken into consideration. In 2009, the re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became an issue, sparking Green Movement protests. Twitter, one of the sources of news about the protests, found its website defaced by the self-proclaimed “Iranian Cyber Army.” The Revolutionary Guards, the main power base within Iran’s theocracy, is suspected of overseeing a “cyber army” and other hackers.
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Meanwhile, Iran itself has been repeatedly hacked in embarrassing incidents. These include mass closures of gas stations across Iran, surveillance cameras in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, and even state television broadcasts.
Hacks offer high rewards at low costs
The low cost and high rewards come as Iran faces a tense international environment surrounding Israel’s conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels, and the prospect of President Trump re-electing the White House. Iranian hacking attacks are likely to continue.
The growth of 3G and 4G mobile internet services in Iran has made it easier for ordinary people (and potential hackers) to access the internet. Iran has more than 50 major universities offering computer science and information technology programs. At least three of Iran’s top schools are affiliated with Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Security Forces, and are believed to provide potential hackers for the security forces.
Iranian hacking attempts against U.S. targets have included banks and even a small dam near New York City, and a U.S. prosecutor with ties to the Guard has been attacked.
Russia is considered the biggest external threat to the U.S. presidential election, but officials are concerned about Iran. Hacking attempts in the presidential election campaign relied on phishing, sending a number of misleading emails in the hopes that some recipients would mistakenly provide access to sensitive information.
Amin Sabeti, a digital security expert specializing in Iran, says the tactic is effective.
“It’s highly scalable, it’s cheap, and it doesn’t require a skill set because you just put five hard-line crazy people in an office in Tehran and send tens of thousands of emails. That’s enough,” he said.
For Iran, a hack targeting the United States could cause chaos, weaken the Trump campaign, and obtain sensitive information.
“It’s been going on for more than a decade, so I can’t count how many attacks have been attempted on my email or social media,” said Holly Dagles, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. . She once had her email briefly hacked. Iran. “The Iranians are not targeting me because they have useful information flowing into my inbox or direct messages. Rather, they are using my name and think tank affiliation to target others. They want to target people and ultimately build a link to U.S. government officials who may have useful intelligence and intelligence related to Iran.”
Iranian killings and abductions abroad
Iran has vowed to take revenge on President Donald Trump and other officials of the previous administration over the drone strike that killed prominent Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
In July, authorities announced they had beefed up security after learning of Iranian threats against President Trump. Iran has not disclosed any connection to the assassination attempts on President Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania. A Pakistani man who was in Iran was recently charged by federal prosecutors with plotting to assassinate people in the United States, including President Trump.
Officials take the Iranian threat seriously, given Iran’s history of targeting its enemies.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said, “Islam has grown with blood,” hinting at how Iran would target perceived enemies.
“He, the great prophet of Islam, held the Koran in one hand and a sword in the other, a sword to subdue traitors,” Khomeini said.
Even before Iran built a network of militia alliances in the Middle East, it is suspected of targeting foreign adversaries, including members of the former government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1988, mass executions both at home and abroad shifted attention to those perceived as opponents of the theocracy.
Outside Iran, so-called “serial killings” targeted activists, journalists, and other critics. One of the high-profile incidents related to Iran was a shooting at a German restaurant that left three Iranian-Kurdish people and an interpreter dead. In 1997, a German court cleared Iran’s top leaders of involvement in the shooting, prompting most European Union countries to withdraw their ambassadors.
Iran’s targeted killings have since slowed, but have not stopped. U.S. prosecutors have linked Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to a 2011 plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Meanwhile, there are suspicions that Israel is conducting assassinations targeting scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.
In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal that drastically reduced its enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. Two years later, Trump was elected on a promise to unilaterally withdraw the United States from the agreement. As companies retreat from Iran, the Iranian government has resumed operations targeting dissidents abroad, this time by capturing them and bringing them to Iran for trial.
Belgium arrested Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi in 2018 and ultimately convicted him of masterminding a thwarted bomb attack on exiled Iranian dissidents. Iran has also increasingly turned to criminal organizations for some attempts, including what U.S. prosecutors described as a plot to kill or kidnap opposition activist Masih Alinejad.
Among those targeted after Soleimani’s death was former US National Security Adviser John Bolton. The United States has offered a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of a member of the Revolutionary Guards it says arranged Bolton’s murder for $300,000.
FBI agents said in a 2022 court filing that Guard Gen. Esmail Ghani said, “If necessary, we will conduct operations without our presence, with the help of those on their side, and with their “I will take revenge against Americans within my family,” he said.
