With headlines like “Harris Surges Ahead: A New Era of Democratic Enthusiasm and Opportunity” and “Former Friend Exposes JD Vance’s Radical Transformation: A Study in Political Opportunism”, you might mistake NioThinker for another mainstream media outlet.
Only the occasional odd word choice and convoluted bit of grammar hints that the digital media site flowing with enthusiasm for Kamala and contempt for Trump isn’t really American.
Classified as part of Iran’s ‘Storm-2035’ network: NioThinker is an enemy operation.
Why is an Islamic terrorist state spending its time putting up articles like “Trump Silent After Fox News Poll Favors Harris in Swing States” and “Pelosi Can’t Stop Laughing At Trump’s Choice’ Of J.D. Vance For VP”. Like everything else Iran does, it’s a strategic choice.
Iran has been boosting Biden-Harris while doing everything possible to undermine Trump.
Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, held a briefing for the media during which “officials alluded to but stopped short of directly stating Tehran’s opposition to Trump” while falsely claiming that the “U.S. government has not detected any foreign hacking, interference or tampering with election machines and websites”. The month before, an Iranian team had compromised a user account of a “county-level government in a swing state.”
And, much more seriously, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) revealed that “a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit—sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.”
The campaign was the Trump campaign.
The IRGC, the hub of Iran’s Islamic terrorist operations, stole the vetting file for J.D. Vance and began contacting media outlets. The Iranians offered Politico a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions.” An agent told the Washington Post to, “consider me as an anonymous resource who has access to djtfp24 campaign.”
Around the same time that Iran’s intelligence operatives were trying to help the Biden-Kamala campaign, Iran was also plotting an even more direct intervention in the presidential election.
In late June, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies learned of a plot by Iran to allegedly assassinate former President Trump. Earlier this month, Asif Merchant, a Pakistani Muslim, was charged with a plot to “recruit individuals to carry out his plot to assassinate U.S. government officials.” Acting on behalf of Iran, Merchant met in New York and discussed plans to kill those who are hurting the “Muslim world.”
The Muslim agent claimed that “there would be ‘security all around’ the person” and suggested using a political protest as a cover for the killing. The Iranian plan would have moved forward in September putting it on track for a pre-election assassination.
But if Iran is still struggling to carry out a successful assassination, its character assassinations are improving. From launching a digital media site as the “go-to destination for insightful, progressive news” to hacking the Trump campaign and feeding the results to the media, Iran has come to understand that its best odds of stopping Trump is by allying with the Left.
From Hamas to Qatar, Iran’s allies have effectively made our media their own.
Politico and other media outlets did not report on their contacts with the Iranian regime agents who warned the media outlet, “Don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”
Did the media make use of any material from the vetting file in the hit pieces on Vance?
Politico did not clearly rule that out. Neither did any other major media outlet. It’s not clear if any of the Iranian haul of stolen documents has been appearing in media stories already.
CNN told employees not to “download or otherwise try to access any hacked material until you’ve been in touch with your manager, S&P, legal and our security teams”. Rather than rule out using the material, CNN wanted it to go through security and legal clearance.
Former BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, who had made the decision to publish the Clinton campaign’s faked Steele dossier (and last year wrote ‘I Would Publish the Steele Dossier Again’), argued that ” journalists can/should report seriously on real documents, but should also to foreground the hackers’ motives.” Smith, at least, is willing to use the Iranian documents.
And what are Iran’s motives?
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Iran is targeting Trump to “avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States.” This is as positive a way as possible of saying that an enemy nation is intervening in the presidential election to harm the candidate it opposes and to aid the campaign of the candidate it supports.
And it’s not the first time that Iran has interfered in presidential elections to stop Trump.
During the 2020 election, Iranian hackers had tried to pass themselves off as members of the Proud Boys in a false flag operation designed to increase Democrat turnout and generate an election backlash to President Trump. One example of the Iranian campaign involved sending emails to “tens of thousands of registered voters” that threatened them “with physical injury if they did not change their party affiliation and vote for President Trump.” In a clear statement of preference, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), often described as the Iran Lobby, had endorsed Biden, run phone banks for him and donated money to his campaign.
The two track Iranian plan to either kill or defeat Trump is everything that the media falsely claimed about Russia and the 2016 election. Except this time it’s real and they are on board.
Media outlets spent months keeping quiet about the Iranian hack. If they contacted the FBI or the Trump campaign, it has not been mentioned in their stories. And if they refused to use the materials handed to them by enemy agents, that too is something they failed to make clear.
The same media that blamed foreign interference for the 2016 election has become an agent of foreign interference in the 2024 election. Iran has chosen its allies and its enemies.
On NioThinker, the Iranian fake news site, a headline reads, “Kamala Harris: Our Unexpected, Awkward Savior.”
{Reposted from the author’s blog}
