Iran has condemned US sanctions against several Iranians and one Iranian group for trying to influence the 2020 US presidential election.
The US Treasury announced the sanctions on Thursday, along with criminal charges against two Iranians it says launched a cyber-disinformation campaign to selected voters, elected members of Congress and a US media company.
“Iran condemns these new US sanctions as a continuation of the failed policy of Trump’s maximum pressure that are desperate and illegitimate,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Twitter on Friday, referring to former President Donald Trump.
“Such accusations addressed by the US government, who itself has a long history of meddling in other countries’ affairs in different shapes and forms, are baseless,” said the Iranian statement.
The US Justice Department has announced indictments of two Iranians who allegedly took part in an online “disinformation and threat” campaign to influence American voters in the 2020 presidential election.
Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi, 24, and Sajjad Kashian, 27, conducted a cyber-campaign “to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord,” the department said on Thursday.
In tandem, the US Treasury announced sanctions on the two men and three others who ran the cybersecurity company they worked for, Emennet Pasargad.
The Treasury said the company was formerly known as Net Peygard Samavat, which was hit with sanctions in 2019, and the Justice Department gave its former name as Eeleyanet Gostar.
Kazemi and Kashian allegedly obtained confidential voter information and sent menacing emails, pushing out false information to influence Democratic and Republican voters, and attempting to hack into state voting-related websites, the department said.
In one case, they sent out mass emails claiming to be from the far-right Proud Boys militia group that threatened people to change political parties.—Agencies
