February 2, 2024
The US intelligence community has concluded that Iran, Russia, China and Cuba all tried to influence the US congressional elections last year.
The 22-page report, “Foreign Threats to the 2022 US Elections,” was heavily redacted with more than half of the 2+ pages on Iran blacked out. (See at right)
The report concluded that no country tried to interfere with actual voting or to change vote totals. Countries did that in 2016, but the response from the US public was so vocal that no country has tried to repeat that since.
The report concluded that all four countries operated with individual goals. China mainly tried to help or hinder individual candidates seen as favorable or opposed to China. Cuba operated only in Florida trying to help or hinder candidates viewed as favorable or hostile to the Cuban revolution. Russia chiefly sought to undermine the Democratic Party, which is seen as hostile to Russia and more supportive of Ukraine than Republicans.
As for Iran, the report said its “influence activities reflected its intent to exploit perceived social divisions and undermine confidence in US democratic institutions during this election cycle…. Tehran’s efforts during the midterms probably in part reflected resource limitations because of competing priorities and the need to manage internet unrest.” The US election was held seven weeks after the death of Mahsa Amini set off anti-regime protests.
The report made no effort to assess the impact or success of the four countries’ interventions in the campaign. US intelligence agencies are forbidden to do any work on domestic issues, so they cannot make any such assessments. The report simply covers what the interfering counties sought to do.
Since so much of the section on Iran was blacked out, very little in that section was even comprehensible. However, the opening summary paragraphs were left largely intact.
That section said, “We assess that Iran sought to exploit perceived social divisions and undermine confidence in US democratic institutions during this election cycle….
“We assess that Iran’s actions in the lead-up and through the US midterm elections reflected its intent to fuel distrust in US political institutions, increase social tension, and advocate for candidates and policy positions that aligned with Iran’s foreign policy interests….
“Iran’s long-standing goal of weakening US support for Israel probably guided a subset of strategy. Unlike its efforts in 2020, we did not detect an Iranian effort to promote violence in the United States.”
No individual candidates supported or opposed by any of the four countries were named in the report.
The report is the product of the National Intelligence Council, which incorporates input from all 18 intelligence agencies scattered around the US government.
