Aug. 12, 2024: Iran’s American Influence Operations
Iran to attack "within days"; German mosque took orders from Khamenei; Jewish man stabbed in New York for Palestine
The Big Story
On Saturday, Politico reported that it had received hacked internal communications from the Trump campaign, including a 270-page dossier on J.D. Vance from the vice presidential vetting process and a similar dossier on another finalist, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. The documents had been received from an anonymous tipster calling himself “Robert”; When asked how he had obtained the materials, “Robert” responded, “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”
Robert, it now appears, was a member of, or working for, Mint Sandstorm, a group of hackers run by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit. A Trump campaign spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the documents to Politico and said that the campaign had been hacked by Iran, pointing to a report released Friday by Microsoft Threat Intelligence. According to that report, Mint Sandstorm had conducted a spear-phishing attack on an unnamed “high-ranking campaign official” in June 2024—which coincides with the period in which the Trump campaign was conducting its final vetting of vice presidential candidates.
While “Russian disinformation” has attracted the lion’s share of attention since the 2016 election, Iran has also conducted cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns throughout the past two presidential election cycles, designed to delegitimize the U.S. electoral process in general and also to aid the efforts of the Democratic Party, which Tehran sees as an ally. In the same report that identified the IRGC hack of the Trump campaign, Microsoft Threat Intelligence noted that another IRGC-linked group, Peach Sandstorm, had “compromised a user account with minimal access permissions at a county-level government in a swing state.” Last Tuesday, of course, federal prosecutors charged an Iranian agent from Pakistan in connection with a plot to hire hit men to assassinate Trump in New York City in August or September.
The Iranians, according to Microsoft, have also established a handful of fake news sites for the 2024 cycle—although the quality of their content is so poor that it is difficult to imagine any Americans being taken in by them. In the past, however, the Iranians have shown greater sophistication in their influence efforts. During the 2020 election, for instance, Iran deployed a “whole of government” cyber campaign intended to “undercut the reelection prospects of former President Trump,” according to a March 2021 assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). As part of that effort, Iran, using hacked voter-registration information, sent threatening emails to registered Democratic voters in multiple states while posing as members of the right-wing Proud Boys to create negative press for Trump. Prominent voices in the United States, including the Lincoln Project and then White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, took the bait.
The Microsoft report comes on top of a July warning from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that Iran was attempting to “take advantage” of pro-Palestinian protests in the United States, with “actors tied to the Iranian government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.” While ODNI has not identified the groups being financially supported by Iran, U.S.-based networks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, including the PFLP front Samidoun, have been active in the anti-Israel protest movement. The PFLP, a State Department-designated terrorist group, is financially and militarily supported by Iran. Code Pink, another consistent presence at the protests that is now run by Neville Roy Singham’s wife and receives substantial funding from his Chinese Communist Party-connected propaganda network, has sent delegations to Iran on multiple occasions.
Since Oct. 7, we have also seen reports of Islamic charities and non-governmental organizations in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom acting under the direction of the IRGC or the Iranian supreme leader’s office. In the United States, we have seen a Dearborn, Michigan imam praise Khamenei as the “Hussein of our time” at a memorial service for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, emceed by an activist who led “Death to America!” chants at a Dearborn Al Quds Day rally; we have also seen an “anti-war activist” and correspondent for Iranian state-owned Press TV lead left-wing activists in Persian-language chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
Are any of them in communication with, or on the payroll of, Iran? We’d love for ODNI, or the FBI, or anybody, to tell us. But ODNI, the agency that warned of Iranian “financial support” to protesters, is the same agency that sent a memo to all U.S. intelligence agencies earlier this year warning government employees not to use the phrases jihadist, Salafi-jihadist, and Islamic extremism, on the grounds that they are “offensive and inaccurate” and “hurtful to Muslim-Americans.” Would that ODNI bust one of the “Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian community members” that Vice President Kamala Harris has “prioritized engaging…regarding the war in Gaza”? What about an “anti-war activist” working alongside the protesters funded by the Democratic dark money machine? What about the Hitler-curious imam who received $100,000 of Minnesota taxpayers’ largesse, courtesy of Tim Walz? And would they do any of that months before an election, as the Biden-Harris administration prepares to roll out best practices for its “whole of society” effort to combat Islamophobia?
If you answered yes to all those questions, congratulations: we’ve got a pier in Gaza to sell you.
IN THE BACK PAGES: Michael Doran on the Biden administration’s anti-Israel sanctions machine
The Rest
→Quote of the Day:
A nuclear agreement could begin a multigenerational process that could lead to a new relationship between our countries. Iran could begin to reduce tensions with its neighbors and return to its rightful place in the community of nations.
That’s Kamala Harris’ top foreign policy adviser Philip Gordon, outlining the logic of the Iran nuclear deal—i.e. normalize Iran as a regional great power with American blessing—in a 2014 speech to the National Iranian American Council, a suspected Iranian intelligence front, delivered when Gordon was a senior adviser to Barack Obama. The quote comes from a Monday piece in The Free Press by Jay Solomon, which covers some of the same ground we covered in our August 1 Big Story in far greater detail.
Read it here:
→Multiple reports in the American and Israeli press suggest that Israel anticipates an Iranian strike “within days.” A Sunday night article in Axios cited an “updated assessment” from Israeli intelligence and a Sunday call between U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in which Gallant said that “Iranian military preparations suggest Iran is getting ready for a large-scale attack.” Israel’s Channel 13 and Kan public broadcaster also reported Sunday that the current Israeli assessment is that Tehran intends to launch a “major attack this week,” per The Times of Israel. Channel 13 added that there could be a combined attack from Iran and Hezbollah. On Monday morning, Lebanese media reported that Hezbollah had evacuated its entire leadership from its stronghold in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh in anticipation of Israeli strikes.
→On Friday, German authorities revealed that the director of the Hamburg Islamic Center had been taking direct orders from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and that the center itself had been acting as a “financial conduit” for Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, Iran International reports. The center’s chief, Mohammad Hadi Mofatteh, was in “continuous contact” with a senior official from Khamenei’s office from 2021 to 2023 and received direct orders from the supreme leader on how to publicly frame the Oct. 7 attacks as a “necessary act of resistance.” The evidence comes from a closure report released by the German Federal Foreign Office, which shut down the Hamburg Islamic Center in July for its role in “promoting terrorist ideology, antisemitism, and anti-democratic threats to the Federal Republic’s constitutional order.” Last week, Iran International reported that Germany had deported the chief imam of the Islamic Center of Berlin, also for his ties to Iran.
→You read it in Tablet first: Barack Obama is secretly running the Kamala Harris campaign, according to ex-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy made the claim during a Sunday radio appearance and pointed to the Harris campaign’s hiring of key Obama personnel, such as 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe as a senior campaign aide. “You’re getting the Obamas shifting from running the White House to now running this campaign,” McCarthy said. Other Obama veterans tapped by the Harris campaign, according to the New York Post, include Stephanie Cutter, the deputy manager for Obama’s 2012 campaign; Jennifer Palmieri, former White House director of communications; and Obama ad maker Jim Margolis, who is reportedly in “talks” to join the Harris team. Obama, alongside Nancy Pelosi, was reportedly instrumental in convincing Harris to select Tim Walz as her running mate—four years after pushing Joe Biden to select Harris.
→Elon Musk will be hosting a live conversation with Donald Trump on X Spaces at 8pm U.S. Eastern Time tonight. The stream will be hosted on Trump’s X account, which can be found here—assuming the European Union doesn’t get in the way. On Monday, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton published an open letter to Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino regarding the Trump interview, warning…we’re not sure what, exactly. The letter, which urged Musk’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act, reads in part:
[Compliance with the DSA] notably means ensuring, on the one hand, that freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, are effectively protected, and, on the other hand, that all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with live events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.
Breton added that “we are monitoring the potential risks in the EU of the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political—and societal—events around the world, including debates and interviews.” The DSA enables EU regulators to fine digital companies up to 6% of their global annual revenue, or block their services in Europe, for noncompliance.
→Early Saturday morning, a Jewish man was stabbed near the Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn by an assailant shouting “Free Palestine!” The assailant, 22-year-old Vincent Sumpter, a Black man, approached a group of visibly Jewish men on the street and “exchanged words” with them, according to Yaacov Behrman, a spokesman for Chabad. After yelling “Free Palestine,” Sumpter asked one of the men “Do you want to die?” and then stabbed him once in the chest. The victim, identified as Yechiel Michel Dabrowskin, is expected to survive. Sumpter has been charged with second-degree assault as a hate crime. As The Scroll reported last week, Jews were victims in 30 of the 52 “hate incidents” recorded by the New York Police Department in July.
→Both of the female boxers disqualified from International Boxing Association competition for having XY (male) chromosomes, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu Ting, won Olympic gold in their respective weight classes. In a press conference last week, former chair of the IBA Medical Committee Dr. Ioannis Filippatos confirmed that blood tests had found that both Khelif and Lin were biologically male but that the IBA was legally barred from releasing the results of the tests without the consent of the Algerian and Taiwanese Olympic Committees, which has not been granted. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which governs Olympic eligibility, has continued to insist that both boxers are female, but without directly challenging the IBA’s claims about the test results. The IOC, for instance, has insisted that both boxers are “legally” women and has asserted, without evidence, that it’s “scientifically not true anymore” that “XX or XY is the clear distinction between the men and the women.” On Sunday, Reduxx reports, Rafael Lozano, a coach from the Spanish women’s boxing team, revealed that Khelif had been forced to practice with male boxers during a training retreat in Spain after injuring all of her female practice partners. “I don’t see it as fair,” Lozano said of Khelif being allowed to compete.
TODAY IN TABLET:
It’s All Over Now, Goodnight, by Jeff Weiss and Meaghan Garvey
Reality star turned ex-President Donald Trump makes his last stand at the RNC in Milwaukee
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
The Anti-Israel Sanctions Machine
In response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, the Biden-Harris administration assembled a team tasked with toppling Bibi
by Michael Doran
President Biden recently achieved a historic first for which he has received no credit. He is the first president to form an interagency team dedicated to imposing sanctions on an ally, namely, Israel.
To be sure, the United States sanctioned allies on many occasions. Recent examples of this kind include sanctions designed to prevent Germany from completing the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, and sanctions on Turkish defense industries to penalize Ankara for its procurement of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system. These sanctions resulted from a specific action by an allied government that Washington sought to reverse.
But the sanctions against Israel are of a qualitatively different kind. The Biden administration has assembled an interagency team of targeteers tasked with finding individuals and groups to sanction—not to reverse a specific policy, but to weaken if not topple the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The existence of this machine has been hiding in plain sight since last February, when Biden issued an executive order claiming that violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank was threatening the stability of the entire Middle East. The order laid out the justification for the interagency team of targeteers and provided it with the necessary legal authorities to generate sanctions packages.
The press has reported on the executive order and has taken note of the sanctions the administration has generated, but it has also failed to ask some basic questions, which I put to contacts in the government. Here is what I gleaned.
The White House has established an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. The International Economics Directorate at the National Security Council (NSC) leads the effort. Ilan Goldenberg, who until April worked for Vice President Kamala Harris and has now moved to the Strategic Planning Directorate in the NSC, also plays a very enthusiastic role. In the State Department, the Office of Economic Sanctions Policy has the lead. It works closely with the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury. Together they prepare evidentiary packages.
The team convenes frequently, to meet the goal, set by the president and his top advisers, of rolling out packages of sanctions with regularity. By my count, six tranches have been rolled out so far. The next tranche, I have learned, is already prepared, waiting for release after Iran attacks Israel, so that the administration can dodge the accusation of weakening Israel in time of war.
The regularity of the rollouts, which average about one tranche per month, matter to the administration more than the specific content of the sanctions. The goal is not to reverse any policy by the Israeli government but to create a climate of controversy around Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners.
Biden did not create this sanctions machine in response to any development on the ground in the Middle East other than the surprise attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. When the attack generated the fear in Washington that the resulting war would strengthen the Israeli right, Biden launched an initiative to counter it.
Tom Nides, Biden’s ambassador to Israel until July 2023, almost certainly reflected the current view of the Biden administration when, at a recent conference, he called for substituting right-wing ministers like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir with opponents of Netanyahu like former prime ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. “We need to get the crazies out. We need to bring the moderates back in,” Nides said.
It was undoubtedly with this goal in mind that Biden’s Israel sanctions machine proposed sanctioning Ben-Gvir. Biden personally nixed the idea, but someone in the administration made sure to leak to the press the fact that the proposal was under consideration. Even sanctions that do not receive approval can still generate press reports that further the goals of the campaign.
The administration’s cover story, that it is issuing sanctions in reaction to events on the West Bank, evaporates when one examines the specific content of the sanctions. Consider the case of Elor Azaria, whom Secretary of State Blinken sanctioned last month. An Israeli medic, Azaria shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian terrorist who was laying wounded on the ground. The administration homed in on Azaria’s story because it can be easily manipulated to support a headline, such as “The Radicalization of Israel’s Military.”
Under scrutiny, however, the propagandistic intentions of the administration become obvious. When I served on the National Security Council in the White House of President George W. Bush, I frequently helped with the sanctioning of specific individuals. This time-consuming process requires meeting strict evidentiary criteria. Treasury regulations require that misdeeds by potential subjects of sanctions must be recent, committed within the last five years.
It was eight years ago, however, that Azaria killed al-Sharif, when President Obama was still in office. Treasury regulations will not allow him to be fitted for economic sanctions. A different legal instrument would be required to make Azaria’s story newsworthy again. Biden’s team found it in a law that bars entry to the United States to foreign officials guilty of gross human rights violations. Azaria is not an official, nor is he the leader of a death squad. He’s a simple baker, who plays no role in politics, but the administration’s lawyers gave the green light, nonetheless.
Azaria served time in an Israeli prison for his crime. Azaria claimed that he used his gun because he feared that al-Sharif was wearing a suicide vest and had made a sudden movement. The Israeli military doubted this defense, tried him for manslaughter, and found him guilty. Stripped of rank, he also served half of an 18-month prison sentence and was released.
Regardless of whether Azaria acted appropriately, or whether he received a just punishment, two things are obviously true. First, his case has nothing to do with the very dubious allegation of a spike in settler violence. Second, he poses no danger to the peace and security of the Middle East—the ostensible reason for creating the interagency team targeting people and entities in Israel.
The rise of the Israel targeteers is not the only historic first of Biden’s presidency. On his watch, the International Court of Justice smeared Israel with the accusation of apartheid. An unprecedented number of American allies have moved to recognize the state of Palestine. Iran attacked Israel with the largest ballistic missile barrage ever launched by any country against another. And for the first time, Tehran mobilized all elements of its “Resistance Axis” in a coordinated campaign.
There is a clear connection between the elements on this list of firsts. Israel’s detractors and its mortal enemies feel they can act with impunity, because Biden has signaled clearly that the United States cares as much about weakening the Israeli right wing as it does with defeating Israel’s foes.
This administration has in ways more pronounced and blatant than Clinton and Obama not just attempted to interfere with Israeli policy but actively sought the downfall of its democratically elected government in the interest of appeasing terror at Israel’s expense
A middle-aged woman informed me yesterday that she gets all her news from FB. Biden stayed in the basement, Harris doesn't have to answer a question, as long as she has a pic on FB she's actively campaigning.