The Biden Administration announced on December 31, 2024 that it is leveling sanctions on entities in Iran and Russia over attempted election interference. The Treasury Department said the entities, a subordinate organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a Moscow-based affiliate of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, attempted to interfere in the 2024 elections.
“As affiliates of the IRGC and GRU, these actors aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election,” said the Treasury Department in a news release. “The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said in the statement. “The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy,” Smith added.
A spokesperson for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said that Iran has denied interfering in US elections “on multiple occasions,” citing past statements that denied the allegations and calling them “devoid of any credibility and legitimacy,” “fundamentally unfounded” and “wholly inadmissible.” “Our reaction remains the same,” said Ali Karimi Magham, a mission spokesperson. Russia’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., denied the US allegations in a statement, saying “we respect the will of the American people.”
The Treasury sanctions announcement on December 31 said that the named Cognitive Design Production Center, acting on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, planned operations “since at least 2023 … to incite socio-political tensions among the U.S. electorate.” The Treasury also said the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise, “at the direction of, and with financial support from, the GRU,” directed and subsidized “the creation and publication of deepfakes and circulated disinformation about candidates in the U.S. 2024 general election.” That included disinformation that was “designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin,” the department’s release said.
US intelligence officials said in September that propagandists in Russia, Iran and China were using artificial intelligence in efforts to deceive Americans and interfere in the 2024 presidential election. Though none of the entities sanctioned by the Treasure Department are affiliated with China, the department said in a separate letter Monday that its computers had been hacked in a state-sponsored Chinese operation in “a major incident.” China denied that allegation.
