Iranian-Linked Websites Targeting U.S. Minority and Veteran Voters Ahead of Elections

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A network of nearly two dozen websites with ties to Tehran is the latest pro-Iranian effort aimed at influencing specific groups of U.S. voters, including minorities and veterans. These fake news websites, identified by a neoconservative think tank, have been spreading disinformation related to the upcoming U.S. elections, raising concerns about Iran's growing interference in the U.S. electoral process.

 

Researchers from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) discovered a network of at least 19 websites posing as news or analysis platforms. Among them is “Afro Majority,” a site promoting Vice President Kamala Harris and Black Lives Matter, and “Not Our War,” which criticizes both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, targeting U.S. veterans. These findings, shared exclusively with POLITICO, suggest a coordinated and expansive influence operation.

 

Five of the websites had been previously identified by other researchers, but the FDD findings indicate they are part of a broader, organized effort. All the sites were found to disseminate at least some pro-Iranian fake news or opinion pieces, such as content praising the Iranian government’s response to recent protests on U.S. college campuses against the war in Gaza. While FDD did not directly link these sites to the Iranian government, five had been previously connected to Tehran by other organizations.

 

Microsoft had earlier exposed two of these websites, “Savannah Time” and “Nio Thinker,” as having ties to the Iranian government. Savannah Time masqueraded as a news outlet for Savannah, Georgia, a critical swing state, while Nio Thinker posed as a left-leaning site aimed at reducing support for Trump. OpenAI also flagged these sites, along with others, as part of an “Iranian influence operation.” Another site, “Westland Sun,” was found to target voters in Michigan, another key swing state in the upcoming election.

 

Many of these websites utilized artificial intelligence, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to generate their content. Despite being hosted on servers outside the U.S., these websites continue to operate, even those initially identified by Microsoft and OpenAI. FDD has called on the U.S. government to collaborate with international partners to take down these sites. FDD experts informed the Biden administration of their findings before publication but did not specify which agencies were involved. Both the White House and the FBI declined to comment when contacted by POLITICO.

 

Max Lesser, a senior analyst on emerging threats at FDD and one of the report’s authors, stated that the investigation began after Microsoft and OpenAI’s findings were released. “When we first looked at this web hosting server, we saw a lot of domains,” Lesser explained. “We don’t believe that every domain on that server is related, but when we came through and actually looked at each domain on the primary server that was shared between the three domains that Microsoft exposed… we found that these appear to be Iranian influence operations.”

 

Though many of the websites appeared sophisticated at first glance, most lacked author bylines, and those that did often featured nonexistent individuals. Social media accounts linked to the sites were also found to be inoperative. These findings were disclosed weeks after the Trump campaign suffered a hack and leak operation, which U.S. agencies attributed to the Iranian government. The Biden and Harris campaigns were similarly targeted. Additionally, Google Cloud’s Mandiant recently published evidence of an Iranian counterintelligence operation using fake pro-Israeli websites to identify potential dissidents in Iran and abroad who might support Israel.

 

Credit: Politico 2024-09-09

 

 

 

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[Purdey]

Most countries use journalists to make their viewpoint more digestible. Carl Bernstein discussed this in the 70s and doubtless it hasn't stopped today. 

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