VOA News | Wednesday, November 6, 2024 
Iran uses open and covert methods to sway US voters

Foreign adversaries used increasingly sophisticated meddling operations to target the November 5 U.S. presidential race between Democratic party candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican party opponent, former President Donald Trump. Iran has sought to influence and interfere with the results of the poll by promoting disinformation narratives favorable to its own foreign policy goals. The societal division in the U.S. and predictions of “post-election unrest,” as well as depictions of the United States’ support for Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as Americans’ historic “support for genocide,” dominated the Iranian state-controlled media coverage of the U.S. elections. An Iran-operated network of social media accounts and fake news sites targeted U.S. voters on opposite ends of the political spectrum with polarizing messaging. In the days before the election, Press TV, a state-owned English language outlet, has run analyses and news items depicting the United States as a “defunct” nation, which the presidential elections only amplified. “As America heads to the polls, the only certainty seems to be that division, disunity, dissatisfaction and maybe even disfunction aren’t going away anytime soon,” Press TV analyst Ramin Mazaheri said in a November 4 report that exemplifies the overall coverage…Read more