Donald Trump Releases Ad Blaming Kamala Harris for Iran Missile Strike

Former President Donald Trump‘s campaign released a new ad that seemingly blames his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, with the new barrage of missiles Israel has been facing for the past two days.

“Like us, China also saw their weakness. So did Putin, then he invaded Ukraine,” the ad states. “Hamas saw Harris’ anti-Israel statements and will use it as a greenlight to keep murdering Israelis, and Iran thinks Harris is so incompetent new intel shows that they’re trying to help Harris win the election.”

Iran has fired a series of missiles at Israel in what appeared to be the latest escalation as Israeli forces battle the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

The attack was later confirmed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which said “dozens of ballistic missiles targeting important military and security targets” were launched in “self-defense” over the killing of Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July and in response to “the intensification of the regime’s evils with the support of the United States” over attacks in Gaza and Lebanon.

Last Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a strike in southern Beirut that killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC Major General Abbas Nilforushan, both of whom were mentioned in the latest IRGC statement. Following their deaths, which came amid nearly a year of cross-border escalations, Israel stepped up its strikes in Lebanon and announced it had begun “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah across the border.

“We need the strength that will protect us,” the ad said.

Newsweek also reached out to Harris’ campaign for comment.

Trump released a statement earlier Tuesday noting that when he was president “Iran was in total check.”

“They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal,” Trump said. “Kamala flooded them with American cash and, ever since, they’ve been exporting terror all over, and unraveling the Middle East.”

When Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign for additional comment, spokesman Steven Cheung pointed to the former president’s statement.

The Republican presidential nominee went on to note that under his administration there was no war in the Middle East or Europe as well as “harmony in Asia, no inflation, no Afghanistan catastrophe.”

Iran has been the center of a lot of controversies in the U.S. as well this election season. Just days after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear in July, the FBI announced that Iran had allegedly been separately plotting to kill the former president. Federal officials later revealed that Iran had hacked and stolen confidential information from the Trump campaign.

“It is no surprise that Iran desperately wants Kamala Harris to be President, because they know as long as she is in power, they can take advantage of America,” Trump said in his statement Tuesday. “That is why they have tried to target me.”

In August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a statement identifying “increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving 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,” the statement added, “which the IC [intelligence community] attributes to Iran.”

Iranian officials, however, told Newsweek the U.S. intelligence claims were baseless.

A group, Iranians for Trump, was launched on September 3 as well, due to what it describes as the failed work to confront Iran by President Joe Biden and Harris.