Washington – The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on Russian and Iranian entities for their attempts to interfere in the 2024 election, the Treasury and State departments announced Tuesday.
Specifically, the Treasury Department is imposing new sanctions on a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Cognitive Design Production Center, as well as the Moscow-based Geopolitical Experience Center and its director , Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, affiliates of the Russian Main. Directorate of Intelligence.
Bradley Smith, the Treasury Department’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said that “the governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people by targeted disinformation campaigns”.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said penalties build on previous ones aimed at disrupting Iran and Russia’s efforts to undermine confidence in democratic institutions.
“These actors sought to inflame sociopolitical tensions and undermine our electoral institutions during the 2024 United States general election,” Miller said in a statement.
The Treasury Department said Russian entities used generative AI tools to create disinformation for distribution through websites designed to create false corroboration between stories. The Treasury Department said Russia also manipulated videos for its own benefit.
The Treasury said Iran used social engineering to gain access to people with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both parties, something the US warned was happening earlier this year.
The designation means that all properties and interests of affected targets located in the US or under US control are blocked and must be reported. The new sanctions come as President Biden is winding down his agenda less than three weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Before the election, the Biden administration warned that several countries, including Russia, Iran and China, were trying to improperly influence the US election. In July, CBS News reported that US intelligence detected an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. Trump ordered in 2020 airstrike that killed the top Iranian commander, gen. The great Soleimani.
And Moscow has long sought to use covert foreign influence campaigns and cyber activities to attack US national security interests, particularly after its invasion of Ukraine.