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The United States declared on Tuesday that it is imposing sanctions on Russian and Iranian companies for attempting to meddle in elections.

The groups, a Moscow-based branch of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, and a subordinate organisation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, attempted to meddle in the 2024 elections, according to the Treasury Department.

“As affiliates of the IRGC and GRU, these actors aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election,” said the Treasury Department in a news release.

“The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said in the statement.

“The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy,” Smith added.

Iran has denied meddling in U.S. elections “on multiple occasions,” according to a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the UN in New York, who cited earlier denials of the accusations, calling them “devoid of any credibility and legitimacy,” “fundamentally unfounded,” and “wholly inadmissible.”

Mission spokesperson Ali Karimi Magham stated, “Our response has not changed.”

A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Russian Embassy in Washington.

The designated Cognitive Design Production Centre, operating on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, planned efforts “since at least 2023… to incite socio-political tensions among the U.S. electorate,” according to the Treasury sanctions release on Tuesday.

Additionally, the Treasury stated that the Centre for Geopolitical Expertise, located in Moscow, “at the direction of, and with financial support from, the GRU,” directed and subsidized “the creation and publication of deepfakes and circulated disinformation about candidates in the U.S. 2024 general election.”

In the department’s release, it stated that this included misinformation that was “designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin.”

In September, U.S. intelligence authorities claimed that Chinese, Russian, and Iranian propagandists were attempting to manipulate Americans and sway the 2024 presidential election by employing artificial intelligence.

The Treasure Department said in a separate letter on Monday that its computers had been compromised in “a major incident” in a state-sponsored Chinese operation, even though none of the organisations it sanctioned on Tuesday have any ties to China. China refuted that claim.

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