Washington — The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on Russian and Iranian entities over their attempts to interfere in the 2024 election, the Treasury and State Departments announced Tuesday.
Specifically, the Treasury Department is imposing fresh sanctions on a subsidiary of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Cognitive Design Production Center, as well as the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise and its director, Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, affiliates of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate.
Bradley Smith, the Treasury Department’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the “governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said these sanctions build on previous ones aimed at disrupting Iran and Russia’s efforts to undermine confidence in democratic institutions.
“These actors sought to stoke sociopolitical tensions and undermine our election institutions during the 2024 U.S. general election,” Miller said in a statement.
The Treasury Department said the Russian entities used generative AI tools to create disinformation to distribute across websites designed to create false corroboration between the stories. The Treasury Department said Russia also manipulated videos to its benefit.
Treasury said Iran used social engineering to access people with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both parties, something the U.S. warned was happening earlier this year.
The designation means all property and interests of the affected targets that are in the U.S. or under U.S. control are blocked and must be reported. The fresh sanctions come as President Biden is wrapping up his agenda less than three weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Ahead of the election, the Biden administration warned that multiple countries, including Russia, Iran and China, were trying to unduly influence U.S. elections. In July, CBS News reported that U.S. intelligence detected an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. Trump ordered the 2020 airstrike that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
And Moscow has long sought to use covert foreign influence campaigns and cyber activities to attack U.S. national security interests, especially after its invasion of Ukraine.
