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Trump’s leadership has stepped up his complaint against Iran, but Tehran has chosen a path of moderation, intelligence has shown.
By Julian E. Barnes, David E. Sanger, Ronen Bergman and Lara Jakes
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has more complaints and pressure on Iran in recent days, accusing the country of planning assassinations of U. S. diplomats, making accusations of piracy, unilateral sanctions, and denouncing Tehran for interfering in november elections.
But the crusade to denigrate and isolate Iran contradicts Tehran’s current position. Iran’s ideal leader has blocked all direct and significant retaliation against the United States, at least for now, allowing cyber activity to flourish, according to US officials and allies informed about the new version. intelligence reports.
Iran also abandoned plans a year ago to offer a wonderful election season this fall, such as an attack on shipping in the Persian Gulf or oil production in the Middle East designed to surprise global money markets and damage President Trump’s chances of re-election. according to U. S. officials familiar with intelligence.
Iran overheated after the pandemic devastated the world economy, rendering any kind of attack on oil production useless. Iran also now believes that any attack beyond undercover cyberattacks would bring advantages to Trump, allowing him to improve his friend base and give the United States the opportunity for an army response, according to the American best friend and Iranian officials.
Iranian leaders, according to allied intelligence, have concluded that moderation is the way to save him, Mr. Trump.
But Trump and several of his most sensible advisers have described Iran as an increasingly damaging threat. On Saturday, the United States will again impose the sanctions that oppose Iran, acting without that of Europe, which opposes the decision. Trump and Robert C.
Some management officials have declared the recent moderation of Iranians. In a briefing with reporters this week on sanctions, Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s envoy for Iranian policy, said Iran had acted with “some caution,” attributed the measure to the United States. army attack in January that killed Major General Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian commander overseeing Tehran’s power forces in the Middle East.
U. S. intelligence on Iranian intentions has been vague and officials did not talk in detail about the evidence behind new evidence of Iranian prudence, but officials said the conclusion of Iran’s relative inaction was consistent with its recent movements in the Middle East.
In private, Iranian leaders are convinced that the United States and Israel are conducting operations against them, according to allied intelligence officials, but refrained from taking primary retaliation, for example, for an explosion in July at their nuclear sites in Natanz for which Israel Iran has not publicly blamed the explosion, which destroyed a centrifuge production plant and a serious setback for its nuclear program.
Iranian officials felt a trap, Allied officials said. Iranian officials that these attacks intend to provoke retaliation so that the United States or Israel can respond with an army attack.
Despite Iran’s overall moderation, the accumulation of Iranian piracy attempts has been remarkable. Microsoft warned last week that a hacking organization called Phosphorous connected to the Iranian government had “tried in vain to log in to the accounts of management officers and Donald J. “Trump for “presidential crusade personnel,” an acceleration of attacks that have been going on for months.
Microsoft, with the approval of a federal court, confessed 155 Internet domain names that it proved belonged to the Iranian organization and were used for attacks, but compared to activities beyond Iran, the attacks have not inspired U. S. intelligence officials.
Beyond sanctions, the Trump administration has sought other tactics to accentuate its complaint and pressure on Tehran. The Ministry of Justice announced 4 rates in 3 days of Iranian piracy groups, but none were related to election interference. And the state and treasury departments also announced sanctions Thursday similar to Iranian hackers subsidized through Tehran’s intelligence firm that have targeted dissidents, hounds and others in the country.
The army announced that the Nimitz aircraft carrier and the accompanying ships had entered the Persian Gulf on Friday. Navy officials said the action was a long-planned educational deployment, but stated that they also instructed Iran to avoid any provocative action when the new US and its allies were in the process of being able to do so. U. S. sanctions come into effect.
Administration officials also highlighted Iran’s efforts at electoral interference. In addition to infiltrating the Trump campaign, Iran has also used social media to criticize the White House’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and highlight social unrest in the United States.
But Iran cannot mix its open complaint with more covert efforts to seed the department in the United States with the effectiveness of Russian intelligence agents, said Ariane M. Tabatabai, an analyst with the Alliance for the Security of Democracy and of a published article. over Tehran on Thursday Efforts.
“Iran is doing a lot more than they’re doing, but we don’t exaggerate the risk either,” he said. “Right now, the greatest risk of electoral interference is not Iran. “
Iran opposes Trump’s re-election, as reported last month through William R. Evanina, a senior civil servant in the workplace of the Director of National Intelligence, but it was revealing because he described no action through Iran comparable to that of Russia. physically powerful election interference operations, Said Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“Judging by the ODNI statement, we don’t see any of the measures taken through Russia through Iran,” Schiff said in an interview. “Iran has a complicated cybercapacity but nothing at the point of Russia. nor the infrastructure to assemble the kind of crusade that Russia made in 2016 or that it is undertaking lately.
Trump’s leadership has highlighted the risk of Iranian interference on behalf of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. , the Democratic nominee. The White House pointed to Iranian interference in a component to appease Trump, who has expressed hostility to the clues that Russia would interfere on his behalf, according to former intelligencemen.
Iran’s purpose is above all to retain the power of Europe, Russia, and China, all of which oppose America’s efforts to re-impose economic sanctions and avoid doing something that jeopardizes the expiration of the United Nations arms embargo scheduled for October.
Israeli attacks on Iranian forces in Syria this year led the new head of the Iranian Quds Force to urge him to respond. Instead, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been legal in launching a small cyberattack opposed to Israel.
After the Natanz explosion, the Quds Force returned for a reaction in favor of Israel, and Ayatollah Khamenei rejected the request.
In recent days, U. S. government officials have discussed the obvious threats to U. S. diplomats through iranians from Iran’s reaction to the January drone strike that killed General Suleimani.
Lana Marks, the U. S. ambassador to South Africa and Trump’s political supporter, was a possible target of an Iranian attack, according to national security officials, but intelligence reports said Iran did not have to directly attack a U. S. official and existing ones. and former officials accused Trump’s leadership of overestimation of the threat. Politician previously reported that Ms. Marks was an objective.
Iran denied the allegations and said its propaganda aimed to expand tensions before the election.
The Trump administration’s crusade to further criticize or isolate Iran has failed.
For example, sanctions, which oppose Iran’s violations of its historic 2015 nuclear deal with global forces, aim to harness the strength of the foreign network that opposes Iranian trade. after European allies retracted the Trump administration’s insistence that it could continue to punish the Iran deal under the terms of the pact, which they withdrew two years ago.
This has exacerbated tensions that were already simmering between the United States and its allies in Europe, which have threatened to extend to diplomatic issues, according to a senior EUROPEAN official.
Trump’s leadership is stronger for its hard line than it opposes Iran with some Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which see Iran as the “main destabilizing force in the Middle East,” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. a recent interview with the Atlantic Council, but the dangers of the administration’s hard line infuriate other countries in the region, adding Iraq and Qatar, any of which house U. S. troops and are U. S. strategic partners in the Middle East, but also maintain ties with Tehran.
Iran is patient and sticks to low-level cyber operations that it hopes to attribute directly to it. Iranian officials don’t have much wisdom in American politics, but they read reports from the US and European press suggesting that biden is more likely to win. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a CIA exoficial and principal investigator at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said.
“As long as Western comments show biden is in favor of victory, I suspect the Iranian reaction will be to play waiting,” Mr. Gerecht.
Iran is carefully assessing the dangers of any action aimed at undermining Trump creating opposed to the low chance of effectively interfering in the presidential campaign.
“Could they influence the election?” Mr. Schiff asked. “And if they are not, do you value the threat of getting stuck and submit to the backlash?”
Julian E. Barnes, David E. Sanger and Lara Jakes ed of Washington and Ronen Bergman of Tel Aviv. Eric Schmitt contributed to Washington and Farnaz Fassihi of New York.
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