The Iranian regime sought to undermine President Donald Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, with Joe Biden emerging victorious, then doubled down in 2024 through a host of election meddling efforts and even assassination attempts in 2024.

Trump won the latter election. Israel and the U.S. soon struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and war now looms once more. The Iranian efforts to stop Trump in 2020 and 2024 are perhaps unsurprising, given Trump’s consistent mantra that Iran must not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Although reportedly preferring a diplomatic solution, Trump appears to be moving toward striking Iran, with the U.S. military moving significant military assets into the region, insisting he would prefer to strike a deal with the Iranian regime but that, if it comes to war, his top general has told him “it will be something easily won.”

U.S. deploys massive naval armada

The Center for Strategic and International Studies assessed late last week that the naval "armada" in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean—with two carrier groups including 14 surface warships — is the largest in the region since five carrier battle groups assembled at the outset of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon said Monday that “the Department of State updated its Travel Advisory for Lebanon […] to reflect that the State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government personnel and the family members of government personnel to leave Lebanon due to safety risks.” The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued a similar notice on Friday.

Trump campaigned in 2016 against the controversial Iranian nuclear deal which had been inked and agreed to by President Barack Obama in 2015.

When Trump won, his first term was marked by a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Iranian regime, with Trump exiting the Iran deal, increasing sanctions against Iran after they had been lifted by Obama, designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, targeting Iran’s terrorist proxies, killing IRGC leader General Qassem Soleimani, and others.

The Iranian regime responded with a sophisticated election influence effort in the 2020 campaign between Trump and President Joe Biden, with the Iranians fighting to keep Trump away from a second term and favoring the Iran-friendly Biden.

Biden's soft pro-Iranian policies come back to haunt peace in the Mid-east

The Biden administration then spent four years loosening some of the pressure on Iran and seeking a doomed rapprochement with the regime as Biden tried and failed to secure the revival of a deal with Iran. Hamas, considered a proxy of Iran, launched its deadly cross-border terrorist attack and raped and murdered hundreds of civilians at a music festival on October 7, 2023. Hamas suffered no meaningful condemnation or sanctions from Biden.

Israel responded with a significant military campaign in Gaza as well as the targeting of Iran’s Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon. Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel in 2024, and Israel’s aerial campaign in response resulted in the evisceration of much of Iran’s air defenses.

The Biden administration, however, urged Israel not to target the Iranian regime’s nuclear facilities — something the Israelis largely acquiesced to, until last June after Trump had taken office and his 60-day negotiation deadline with the Iranians had expired.

The Iranians had redoubled their efforts during the 2024 election, trying to keep Trump out of office with IRGC-backed assassination plots and with hack-and-leak operations targeting Trump’s campaign and other cyber efforts aimed at stopping him from beating Biden and, subsequently, accidental nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. It didn’t work.

Trump won, Iran failed to reach an agreement with the Trump administration, and last summer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a devastating aerial campaign against the Iranians, with Iran responding with barrages of ballistic missiles aimed at major Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv.

Trump then ordered strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in late June of last year, codenamed "Operation Midnight Hammer," deploying B-2 bombers to destroy Iranian facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Trump continues to urge Iran to reach an agreement with the U.S., but remains insistent that the regime must give up its nuclear weapons program.

Revolutionary Iran as a decades-long foe of the U.S.

Just the News reported this week on how the Iranian regime has positioned itself as an adversary of the U.S. ever since it came into power decades ago in 1979. Radical Iranian students and operatives backed by since-deceased Ayatollah Khomeini took dozens of American embassy staffers hostage in 1979 and held them for 444 days. Khomeini was sheltered in Paris until the Islamic radicals welcomed him home as a hero.

Since then, Iranian-backed terrorists have been determined to be behind the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 U.S. service members, as well as the deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon that year. That attack killed 17 Americans. The Iranian regime was behind the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia which killed another 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.

The State Department also assessed that, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, "Iran has allowed al-Qaeda facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters” and that “senior AQ leaders continued to reside in Iran and facilitate terrorist operations from there."

Obama's cubic dollars worth of bribes fails to stop jihad

Just the News also reported this week on how the Shiite theocratic Iranian regime is believed to be continuing to shield one of the leaders of the Sunni jihadist terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks, with the FBI's "Most Wanted" Saif al-Adel running the global al-Qaeda terror network under Tehran's protection.

The U.S. entered the controversial nuclear deal with the Iranian regime under the compliant Obama administration in 2015. The Iran deal was reached between the “P5+1” (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.), the European Union, and Iran in June 2015.

Iran received an influx of billions in cash as a result of the Iran nuclear deal, including a jet carrying $400 million in euros and Swiss francs, another $1.3 billion in cash, the release of up to $150 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and the lifting of international sanctions.

Trump and "Maximum Pressure" 1.0

The Trump administration pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, including new sanctions.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran deal in May 2018, saying, “In theory, the so-called ‘Iran deal’ was supposed to protect the United States and our allies from the lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb [...] In fact, the deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and, over time, reach the brink of a nuclear breakout.” Trump called it “defective at its core.”

The Trump administration also labeled the IRGC as a “specially designated global terrorist” group in 2017 and designated it as a “foreign terrorist organization” in 2019. Trump said at the time that the IRGC “actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft” and that it “is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign.”

The IRGC is a powerful branch of Iranian armed forces and, along with its Quds Force, supports terrorists elsewhere in the world, guides Iran’s global proxies, carries out cyberattacks and assassinations, funds missile development, and wields huge influence both inside the country and around the region.

Soleimani was the head of the IRGC and its specialized Quds Force, and the U.S. military took him out through an air strike in early January 2020.

Trump chose to target Soleimani after the violent storming of the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in late December 2019, which in turn followed the Iraqi government’s condemnation of U.S. airstrikes targeting Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. The U.S. blamed Kataib Hezbollah for attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, including one resulting in the death of a U.S. contractor.

Then-Attorney General William Barr said in mid-January 2020 that “the president had the authority to act as he did on a number of different bases” and that “his was a legitimate act of self-defense which interrupted an ongoing campaign” against the United States being carried out by Soleimani and his proxies, and that the strike “re-established deterrence” against Iran.

Iran carried out retaliatory strikes against U.S. military positions in Iraq in the days after Soleimani’s death, including a massive ballistic missile barrage aimed at Iraq’s Al Asad air base. Dozens of U.S. service members sustained injuries, including concussions and traumatic brain injuries.

The Iranians also shot down a civilian airliner taking off from an airport in Tehran, killing nearly two hundred passengers on board.

Proud Boys hoax: Iran seeks to stop Trump’s reelection in 2020 with cyberwarfare

Iranian intelligence sought to undermine Trump’s reelection bid in 2020 through a variety of election influence efforts.

Microsoft assessed in September 2020 that a cyber actor dubbed “Phosphorus, operating from Iran, has continued to attack the personal accounts of people associated with the Donald J. Trump for President campaign.” Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray held an October 2020 press conference where they warned that Iran had gained access to U.S. voter registration information, with Ratcliffe warning Iran was trying to harm Trump’s candidacy.

Ratcliffe explained: “We have already seen Iran sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.”

A senior U.S. intelligence officer told The Washington Examiner in October 2020 that “the Iranians follow U.S. politics closely and saw the last debate where the Proud Boys were an issue and saw an opportunity here to manufacture blowback on Trump by creating a narrative that violent Trump supporters are sending out threatening emails.”

A senior government official also told Reuters at the time, “Either they made a dumb mistake or wanted to get caught. We are not concerned about this activity being some kind of false flag due to other supporting evidence. This was Iran.”

Iran, not Russia, the key source of disinformation, but Democrats stick to their script

The Miami Herald reported in October 2020 that intimidating emails claiming to be from the right-wing Proud Boys group, but actually sent by the Iranians instead, had been sent to hundreds of voters in numerous counties in Florida, seemingly targeting Democrats with a bit of reverse psychology. The emails said, in part, that “you will vote for Trump on Election Day, or we will come after you.” The ODNI’s office said at the time that it would brief the Republican and Democratic lawmakers representing the Florida counties most targeted.

ODNI’s National Intelligence Council later assessed in 2024 that, during the 2020 election, “Iranian cyber actors used data on more than 100,000 voters for its operation impersonating the Proud Boys.”

Multiple Democrats sought to falsely cast doubt on the idea that Iran was trying to undermine Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020, and stuck to the narrative — later proven a lie — that Russia was the true disinformation culprit. “Russia is the villain here, from what we have seen in the public domain,” then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in October 2020. “Iran is a bad actor but in no way equivalent. And they always try to find some equivalence to protect their friend, Russia.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also sought to cast doubt on the Iranians seeking to harm Trump.

“I did receive a classified briefing this afternoon on this, and so I can’t discuss the details, but I can tell you one thing: It was clear to me, that the intent of Iran in this case, and Russia in many more cases, is to […] basically undermine confidence in our elections,” Schumer said on MSNBC in October 2020. “This action I do not believe was aimed … at discrediting President Trump […] It was much rather to undermine confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular figure.”

Nina Jankowicz, who was selected by the Biden administration to be the executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, wrongly tried to undercut the assessment that Iran was attempting to hurt Trump’s reelection chances just before the 2020 vote. Jankowicz was later laughed out of her job after claiming, among other things, that Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation" and had dubbed herself "the Mary Poppins of disinformation" in a TikTok video singing about fake news to the tune of 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.'

ODNI confirms Iran's election meddling in cyberspace

The Department of State and Department of the Treasury sanctioned IRGC-linked groups and other Iranian regime elements in late October 2020 over Iran’s election influence efforts.

After Trump lost that November, the Biden ODNI’s report in March 2021 concluded: “We assess with high confidence that Iran carried out an influence campaign during the 2020 U.S. election season intended to undercut the reelection prospects of former President Trump.”

The ODNI added: “Tehran’s efforts were aimed at denigrating former President Trump [...] Iran’s efforts in 2020 — especially its emails to individual U.S. voters and efforts to spread allegations of voter fraud — were more aggressive than in past election cycles [...] In a highly targeted operation, Iranian cyber actors sent threatening, spoofed emails purporting to be from the Proud Boys group to Democratic voters in multiple U.S. states.”

The Treasury Department in November 2021 also “designated six Iranian individuals and one Iranian entity … for attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

Biden administration stays soft on Iran

The Biden administration’s approach to Iran sought to reverse the Trump administration’s maximum pressure efforts. As the Biden administration sought to rejoin a nuclear deal with Iran, it repeatedly restored sanctions relief to the Iranian regime. Biden would also push Israel not to directly target the Iranian nuclear program.

“I know where the intelligence says it shouldn’t be headed, which is that we shouldn’t lifting sanctions on Iran under any circumstances because the intelligence doesn’t support changing the current policy at all,” Ratcliffe told Fox News in February 2021. “Within days after Joe Biden became President-elect Biden, he talked about wanting to return to the Iranian nuclear deal […] My hope was that once he started to receive intelligence briefings, he would change his mind because there’s no intelligence to support that.” Those hopes proved futile.

Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan declared in late September 2023 that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” Despite the rosy prediction, Hamas, backed by Iran, launched its murderous October 7 terrorist attacks just a week later.

Biden was asked in early October 2024 if he was okay with Israel striking at Iranian nuclear sites, and the president replied, “The answer is no […] We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re gonna do […] They have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion.”

It was reported by The Wall Street Journal in early October 2024 that “Israel has so far refused to divulge to the Biden administration details of its plans to retaliate against Tehran […] even as the White House is urging its closest Middle East ally not to hit Iran’s oil facilities or nuclear sites amid fears of a widening regional war.”

“In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel — right now, the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” the IDF said in late October 2024. “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th — on seven fronts — including direct attacks from Iranian soil. Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond. Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized. We will do whatever is necessary to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel.”

The Wall Street Journal then reported in late October 2024 that Biden and Netanyahu had “agreed on the parameters of the attack in a half-hour phone call” and that “after mounting worry that Israel might strike Iran’s oil infrastructure or even nuclear installations, the Israeli leader set his sights on military targets—to the relief of American officials.”

Trump allows Israel to defend itself without being handcuffed

The U.S. would not place such limitations on Israel after Trump won again in November.

Under the Biden administration, leaks would also undermine the Israelis. Axios reported in October 2024 that “U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intel documents about Israel's preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran.”

CIA analyst Asif William Rahman would be arrested in late 2024 and then sentenced last year for the illegal leaks. “A former CIA analyst was sentenced today to 37 months in prison for unlawfully retaining and transmitting Top Secret National Defense Information to people who were not entitled to receive it, information which was publicly posted on social media platforms in October 2024,” the Justice Department said last June.

Iran seeks to stop Trump’s reelection in 2024 through hack-and-leak operation and more

The Iranian regime stepped up its election influence efforts in 2024, hoping that Trump would yet again be defeated in the rematch against Biden, which turned into a campaign against Biden’s unnominated replacement candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, who did not receive a single primary vote.

The FBI, ODNI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint statement in August 2024 saying that they had “observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity this election cycle, specifically influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns. This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC attributes to Iran.”

The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center also released a report that month assessing that “Iranian actors have recently laid the groundwork for influence operations aimed at U.S. audiences and potentially seeking to impact the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” The report pointed to “Iran-run covert news sites,” at least one of which “caters to liberal audiences and includes sarcastic, long-winded articles insulting Trump.”

Even The New York Times admitted in September 2024 that “Iran Emerges as a Top Disinfo Threat in U.S. Presidential Race” and that “with a flurry of hacks & fake websites, Iran has intensified its efforts to discredit American democracy and possibly tip the race against Trump.”

An ODNI official also said that “Iran is also conducting covert social media operations using fake personas, and is using AI to help publish inauthentic news articles.”

The FBI, ODNI, and CISA made it clear that month that Iranian hackers had sent Biden’s campaign emails in June and July which “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails” and that “Iranian malicious cyber actors have continued their efforts since June to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”

The National Intelligence Council released an October 2024 report titled “Post-Election Day Information Operations Highly Likely” which stated that “Iranian cyber actors may try to publish content denigrating former President Trump.” The same report said that, in February 2024, IRGC-linked “cyber actors had accessed a network domain associated with a U.S. state government's division of elections and probably obtained data on voter registration and on whether or not some of the registered individuals voted.”

ODNI said again in early November 2024, just before the election, that “we have assessed that Iran has conducted malicious cyber activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign.”

Iran targets Trump with assassination

The Justice Department filed charges against Pakistani national Asif Merchant and against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri for their alleged roles in Iranian-backed assassination plots in 2024. The former defendant’s murky plot seemingly targeted Trump, while the latter defendant’s apparently more sophisticated plot was also aimed at the president.

Shakeri remains at large in Iran. Merchant has pleaded not guilty, and Just the News reported that the trial against him began this week. ODNI has categorized both Iranian-backed assassination plots against Trump from 2024 as examples of “Notable Attack Planning” by the Iranian regime’s IRGC.

It was reported by Politico in early October 2024 that “U.S. officials are coming to a troubling realization about Iran’s repeated threats to kill Donald Trump and some of his former top generals and national security strategists: Tehran isn’t bluffing — and it isn’t giving up anytime soon.”

ODNI’s National Intelligence Council said in October 2024 that “efforts by Iran to assassinate former President Trump and other former U.S. officials” were “likely to persist after voting ends, regardless of the projected outcome.”

But the Wall Street Journal reported in November 2024 that “Iran offered written assurances to the Biden Admin last month that it wouldn’t seek to kill Donald Trump, U.S. officials said, a secret exchange meant to cool tensions between Tehran and Washington — as the Republican prepares for his White House return.”

The Iranian efforts to stop Trump through election influence operations and through assassination failed.

Ryan Routh and the Iranian motivation

Ryan Routh, who was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump in September 2024 at a golf course, does not appear to have been directed to do so by the Iranian regime, but his own words show that his murder attempt was at least partly driven by his opposition to Trump’s hardline stance toward Iran.

Secret Service agents had spotted Routh with a rifle at Trump’s Florida golf course in what authorities said was an apparent assassination attempt on the former and future president.

A court filing by the DOJ in September 2024 stated that Routh had written a letter addressed to “The World” which stated, that Trump “ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled.”

Routh also wrote an apparently self-published book in February 2023 titled Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. In it, Routh took “part of the blame” for electing Trump and said: “Iran, I apologize.” He directed a message to Iran: “You’re free to assassinate Trump… No one here in the U.S. seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”

Routh was found guilty in 2025 and was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year.

Trump and the return of “Maximum Pressure”

After he won reelection in November 2024, Trump said last February that Iran would be “obliterated” if it assassinated him while in office. “If they did that, they would be obliterated,” Trump told reporters. “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”

Trump signed an executive order early that month titled “Imposing Maximum Pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Denying Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon, and Countering Iran’s Malign Influence.”

“Since its inception in 1979 as a revolutionary theocracy, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has declared its hostility to the United States and its allies and partners. Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and has aided Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other terrorist networks,” Trump’s directive said.

The Trump White House’s “fact sheet” said that “Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon and intercontinental ballistic missiles; Iran’s terrorist network should be neutralized; and Iran’s aggressive development of missiles, as well as other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities, should be countered.”

Trump said that “I’m torn about” the executive order and that “it’s very tough on Iran […] I’m going to sign it, but hopefully I’m not going to use it very much […] I don’t have much choice [but] Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

If the U.S. decides to hit Iran again in the coming days, it remains to be seen whether the Iranians will be as overwhelmed by U.S. military superiority as they were the last go around.