Opinion: Iran seeks to influence US presidential election — for Kamala Harris

Forget the Russian collusion hoax, a Clinton-campaign funded scam that falsely alleged that Russia colluded with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to help him win. But foreign powers do try to influence U.S. presidential elections, and one of them is Iran.

And we know which candidate Iran wants to win.

According to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines , who in a July statement said, “Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in the past, including in prior election cycles …”

So maybe Iran is the real threat to democracy, and not Republicans as President Biden frequently claims .

More specifically, Haines says, “In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.” (Emphasis added)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said the same thing, telling a joint meeting of Congress “we all know Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building,” and warning pro-Palestinian protesters “you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”

While Haines recognizes that most pro-Palestinian protesters are simply exercising their free-speech rights, that doesn’t mean Iran isn’t acting behind the scenes coordinating and financially supporting some of those protests, even if most of the protesters don’t know it.

There are lots of ways money can be funneled — or more likely laundered — to pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas groups. For example, with rare exceptions, nonprofit charities do not have to publicly reveal the sources of their funding (though they do have to list major donors on their tax returns, which are not available to the public). The government of Iran or its surrogates can funnel money through one or more offshore organizations — some of which may be nothing more than shell companies established for the purpose of laundering money — before it arrives at its final U.S. destination.

For example, scholars at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies published a 2016 paper titled “ The Bear in Sheep’s Clothing : Russia’s Government-Funded Organizations in the EU.” They provided evidence that Russia funded several advocacy groups in Europe to sway public opinion, especially against domestic oil production and fracking. The reason is that prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe was a major purchaser of Russian-produced oil and natural gas. To the extent Europe produced more of its own oil and gas, it would buy less from Russia.

There are suspicions that Russia has been doing the same thing in the U.S.: that is, funneling money to U.S. environmental advocacy organizations that were working to limit or end the production of oil and natural gas and especially fracking in the states.

Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Randy Weber (R-Texas) published a letter in 2017 raising concerns that Russia was funding U.S. anti-fracking groups. They identified a Bermuda-based company, Klein Ltd., which they said had funneled millions of dollars to the U.S-based environmental group the Sea Change Foundation. A wealthy U.S. family eventually spoke up and said they were the money behind Klein and the Sea Change Foundation, denying that foreign money was ever involved.

We’ll take the family at its word, but the point is that shady offshore groups can and do funnel money to various U.S.-based nonprofits, and it isn’t always clear where that money originated.

The fact that Iran already secretly funnels money to numerous organizations — e.g., terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, just to name a few  — implies the Iranians have a well-established international network of money launderers and could easily direct funds to key pro-Hamas protesters in the U.S.

Haines is almost certainly right and probably knows much more than she’s saying about who or which anti-Israeli groups are receiving the money.

However, instead of trying to help Trump win, as the Russian collusion hoax asserted, U.S, intelligence officials think Iran is working to see Trump defeated. CNN reports , “Iran is using covert social media activity and related influence operations in an effort to undercut the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, a US intelligence official said Monday.”

Why? Because Trump cracked down hard on Iran, imposing and enforcing harsher sanctions and preventing the country from selling its oil, which the government uses to finance its terror operations. Biden’s policy (and presumably Vice President Harris’s) has been to ease off, to appease Iran in the hope the mullahs play nice. Oct. 7 may have been a direct result of Biden’s weak foreign policy.

No one should be surprised at the thought that Iran is funneling money to anti-Israel protesters. Indeed, given Iran’s track record, we should be surprised if it isn’t.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas.

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