The claim comes amid reports of foreign efforts to interfere in the US presidential election.
US presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Iran of hacking his campaign.
The Republican candidate’s campaign team issued a statement Saturday night alleging that the Iranian government stole and distributed confidential internal documents. The accusation came after Microsoft issued a report detailing foreign attempts to interfere in this year’s US election campaign.
The campaign team cited past tensions between Trump and Iran but did not provide direct evidence.
“These documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States, with the intention of interfering in the 2024 elections and sowing chaos throughout our democratic process,” said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.
On Saturday night, Trump posted on his Truth Social app that Microsoft informed the campaign that Iran had hacked one of its websites, but said they were “only able to obtain publicly available information.”
A Politico report shortly before the indictment said an anonymous source offered to provide the US media outlet with documents from inside Trump’s operation, including a report on running mate JD Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities.”
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said in a statement that it takes any report of foreign interference “extremely seriously” and condemns any entity that seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions.
The Microsoft report stated that “foreign malign influence in relation to the 2024 US elections began slowly but has been increasing steadily over the past six months, due initially to Russian operations but more recently to Iranian activity.”
Iran’s permanent mission to the UN in New York said in an email that “the Iranian government does not possess or harbor any intention or motive to interfere in the United States presidential elections.”
“We do not give any credence to such reports,” he said in response to the Trump campaign’s allegations.
The Iranian mission to the UN told Reuters news agency that its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces” and that it had no plans to launch such cyber attacks.
Tehran has bad relations with Trump. During his presidency, the US killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran.
“Iranians know that President Trump will end his reign of terror, just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said.
The suspect in Trump’s July assassination attempt had no ties to Iran, but a CNN report last month claimed that US intelligence had uncovered an Iranian plot against Trump. Iran denied the accusations.
The US Department of Justice last week revealed criminal charges against Pakistani citizen Asif Merchant, with ties to Iran and who is accused of planning assassination attempts against political figures in the US, including Trump.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
