A new intelligence report says Iran will keep trying to kill former President Donald Trump regardless of the outcome of the election – and U.S. adversaries will continue trying to undermine confidence in the election even after Nov. 5.
A partially redacted report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), released Tuesday, found that “efforts by Iran to assassinate former President Donald Trump and other former U.S. officials” are “likely to persist after voting ends, regardless of outcome.”
In September, Trump’s campaign said that intelligence officials warned the Republican candidate of “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him.”
The U.S. has gone to unprecedented lengths to protect the former president from retaliation from Iran for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani.
Both Trump and his high-level officials who ordered the strike in 2020 have faced death threats from Iran, which also recently hacked Trump’s campaign and tried to peddle information to Democrats and the media.
Some $150 million per year has also gone to protecting officials like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, former head of U.S. Central Command, according to Politico.
The report also said that Iran prefers Vice President Kamala Harris and will focus efforts on stopping Trump, and that Russia prefers Trump and will continue to attack Harris.
“Moscow and Tehran may also see an opportunity to continue pushing content favoring their preferred outcome,” the report said. “For instance, Russian influence actors have pushed negative messaging about VP Harris and publicly alleged conspiracy theories about her elevation to the top of the ticket. Iranian cyber actors may try to publish content denigrating former President Trump.”
The report also warned that China, Iran and Russia are “better prepared to exploit” elections this year due to “lessons drawn from the 2020 cycle.”
Those exploitations could amount to information operations, cyber threats and physical threats of violence. They are expected to conduct influence operations until the next president is sworn in, to undermine confidence in the results.
China, the report said, is likely to focus its efforts on down-ballot congressional races.
The report found foreign actors “will probably refrain from” trying to alter the vote count since vote casting machines are not connected to the internet and 97% of voters live in precincts with paper records and a paper audit trail — and doing so could prompt Washington to retaliate.
But U.S. adversaries took lessons from the drawn-out vote counting process in 2020.
“Many of these countries did not have a full appreciation for the various election processes that happen after polls close, and now that they have greater awareness of the significance, they have greater ability to attempt to disrupt them,” an ODNI official told reporters.
Intelligence officials have routinely warned that Beijing, Moscow and Tehran would be working overtime to sow division and undermine confidence in the U.S. governing system in an election year, and especially in the days leading up to Election Day.
The official noted that intelligence linked Moscow to a recent unfounded claim circulating on social media about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sexually assaulting a student while he was a high school teacher.
In June, undercover FBI agents met with a Pakistani man who was looking to hire hit men to assassinate a U.S. politician, according to documents unsealed in August. They arrested the man, Asif Merchant, 46, on July 12, the day before Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.
In 2022, the Department of Justice charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps with attempting to kill former national security adviser John Bolton.