The US intelligence community said on Monday that Iran was behind the recent hack of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
The joint statement from the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency formally blamed Iran for the hack, although the Trump campaign had previously said Tehran was responsible.
“As each of us has indicated in prior public statements, Iran seeks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions,” the joint statement said.
“Iran has furthermore demonstrated a long-standing interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means, including through the use of cyber operations to attempt to gain access to sensitive information related to US elections.”
The agencies added that Iran views this election as “particularly consequential” in terms of the effect it could have on its national security, which has added impetus to Tehran trying to shape the outcome.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the statement said.
The Trump campaign said this month that its communications had been hacked and suggested Iran was to blame, citing past hostilities between the former US president and Tehran.
The hack was first reported by Politico, which said it had begun receiving emails in July containing internal Trump campaign documents from an anonymous account.
It is believed that a dossier on vice presidential candidate JD Vance was taken in the hack, although Mr Trump has said the information taken was “publicly available”.
“They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” Mr Trump said at the time.
“Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our government is weak and ineffective, but it won’t be for long.”
Last week, the FBI confirmed it had opened an investigation into the hack.
“Protecting the integrity of our elections from foreign influence or interference is our priority,” the joint statement said.
“As the lead for threat response, the FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible.”
Iran has denied involvement, calling the Trump campaign's claims "unsubstantiated and malicious".