Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley warned on Sunday about the threat of election interference from major foreign adversaries, referring to the Iranian threat she faced personally.
Haley appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and described how Iran targeted her and her GOP presidential campaign as part of its foreign influence operation.
“Look at the murder-for-hire plot on U.S. soil, which I was named in, by Iran. Look at the Russian disinformation, which didn’t start this year. This has been going on for years. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, to some extent,” Haley said after CBS host Margaret Brennan asked her about the Justice Department’s case against a $10 million Russian propaganda operation.
“When I was running my presidential campaign, the FBI had a separate hearing with me to let me know that Iran was meddling, . . . influencing the election through our campaign,” she continued, as Brennan cut her off.
“This has been going for a long time, and Americans need to wake up. Don’t just look at Russia. Don’t just look at China. Don’t just look at Iran. The biggest lesson we need to take is when you look at social media, I bet you a larger percentage of those are foreign engagements.”
Haley advocates a close U.S. relationship with Israel and an aggressive stance against Iran’s support for terrorist proxy organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. As Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, she considers him to be stronger than his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, on national-security issues such as the ongoing Israeli–Hamas war and China’s growing geopolitical ambitions.
Iranian hackers have targeted both the Trump and Biden-Harris presidential campaigns with spear phishing operations, Google confirmed after the attack on Trump’s campaign became publicly known. APT-42, an Iranian-government-backed organization, successfully obtained internal Trump-campaign documents and distributed them to news outlets that have not published them. The organization has targeted numerous U.S. and Israeli officials and organizations to further Iran’s geopolitical objectives.
Microsoft has warned about steps various Iran-backed groups are taking to target U.S. elections and institutions with cyber warfare and intelligence-gathering operations. These strategies are geared toward influencing voters across the political spectrum and interfering with elections by going after political campaigns.
Separately, a Pakistani national with ties to Iran was recently charged with plotting to hire hit men to kill former president Trump. U.S. officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm about Iranian plots against Trump and other government officials involved in the drone strike against top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.