Unpacking Iran’s Efforts to Meddle in the U.S. Election

Happy Thursday! There’s no delusion quite like former Disney executives and venture capitalists teaming up to try to peel off some of the best teams in college football to form a “super league” and comparing their efforts to … one of the greatest underdog stories in sports.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Justice Department on Wednesday charged Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi—a 27-year-old Afghanistan citizen residing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma—with allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on Election Day in the U.S. in the name of the Islamic State. Federal prosecutors said Tawhedi took steps in preparing for the attack, including purchasing firearms and ammunition and attempting to liquidate his family’s assets. Tawhedi was caught and detained—along with an unnamed juvenile co-conspirator—after the pair bought two AK-47 rifles and ammunition from an undercover FBI agent. 
• Israeli officials said on Wednesday that a Hezbollah rocket attack in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona killed two Israeli civilians who were walking their dog. Hezbollah—an Iranian-backed terrorist group in Lebanon—confirmed the attack, claiming the bombardment targeted Israeli soldiers in the city. The Israel Defense Forces later reported that it had destroyed the rocket launchpad used by Hezbollah to strike Kiryat Shmona. 
• Israeli police also reported on Wednesday that a terrorist suspect stabbed and injured six people—including two who were left in critical condition—in a stabbing spree at multiple locations across the Israeli port city of Hadera. The perpetrator, an Arab-Israeli citizen from a city near the West Bank, was “neutralized” by police and armed civilians. Israeli officials said the incident, which came two days after the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 massacre, is being investigated as a terrorist attack.
• North Korean state media reported on Wednesday that the country’s military will completely block off all roads and railways into South Korea. North Korean officials said the move was made in response to military drills conducted by South Korean forces and alleged visits made by U.S. nuclear forces near the Korean peninsula. However, South Korea’s military said in July that North Korea had been installing land mines and erecting physical barriers along its border. 
• The Ukrainian military confirmed on Wednesday that its forces struck a key Russian weapons arsenal located in Russia’s western Bryansk oblast, destroying missile and artillery ammunition stockpiles and guided glide bombs, some of which were provided by North Korea. Russian authorities declared a state of emergency for one district in the Bryansk region, citing “detonations of explosive objects.” Later on Wednesday, Ukraine’s military said it struck a Russian storage base holding about 400 Iranian-made Shahed drones in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry claimed on Wednesday that its forces shot down 47 Ukrainian drones—including 24 over its Bryansk region—in an attack that local officials said left no casualties. 
• The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to American biochemist David Baker and jointly to Google scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. Baker was recognized for the “almost impossible feat” of designing new forms of proteins “that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors,” the Nobel committee wrote. Hassabis and Jumper—lead researchers for DeepMind Technologies, an AI research subsidiary of Google—were recognized for predicting the structures of more than 200 million proteins with the help of DeepMind’s AI model, AlphaFold. 
• Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday night in Siesta Key, Florida, as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour. Siesta Key is a beach community about 70 miles south of Tampa, which avoided a direct hit but was pounded by heavy rain, storm surge, and hurricane-force winds. A flash flood emergency was in effect in the Tampa Bay area, where St. Petersburg had received more than 16 inches of rain as of Wednesday night. As it approached land, Milton spawned at least 19 confirmed tornadoes across Florida, including one that resulted in “multiple fatalities” in Port St. Lucie County, on the state’s Atlantic coast. The storm remained a hurricane as it crossed the peninsula overnight. Sixteen Florida counties—including those on the state’s western and eastern coasts—were under mandatory evacuation orders in anticipation of the storm, the fifth hurricane to hit the U.S. this season. “People that didn’t evacuate that should’ve, we can’t take care of them now,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott told CNN on Wednesday night.

Tehran Sows Chaos

When CBS News’ Bill Whitaker asked Vice President Kamala Harris which country she believed to be America’s greatest foreign adversary in an extended edition of her sitdown with 60 Minutes this week, she had a ready answer.  

“I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” Harris replied. “Iran has American blood on their hands.” But when asked whether she would take military action if there was proof Iran was building a nuclear weapon, Harris said, “I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals at this moment.” 

The vice president’s comments come as Tehran has ramped up its efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election: The Islamic Republic is trying to sow discord and division generally and hurt former President Donald Trump’s electoral chances specifically. U.S. intelligence officials remain confident that the nation’s actual electoral infrastructure and cybersecurity cannot be threatened by the Iranian regime. But they warn the campaigns and candidates may be vulnerable to Iranian attacks and internet users susceptible to misinformation operations. 

Harris’ answer seemed a rather unlikely one for a member of an administration that has tried in vain to revive an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. But Iran was likely also front of mind, having launched an aggressive ballistic missile attack on Israel last week, just days before Harris’ interview.  

In another bold maneuver by the theocratic regime, U.S. officials say Iran plotted to …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,674-word item on Iranian efforts to sow discord ahead of Election Day is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Writing in Foreign Affairs, Jeffrey A. Friedman and Andrew Payne argue for an end to the myth of foreign policy’s irrelevance. “History shows that foreign policy is far from irrelevant to presidential campaigns,” they wrote. “Even if voters attach limited significance to individual foreign policy issues, they want to make sure that candidates are fit to serve as the country’s commander in chief. In particular, Americans believe that it is crucial to have a strong leader who will stand firm when challenged by adversaries. Presidential candidates leverage their reputations as strong leaders to win votes without needing to draw clear contrasts with their opponents on specific foreign policy issues.” November’s election is unlikely to be any different. “At times of heightened threats, voters place a higher premium on electing strong leaders. This tendency is important for understanding the 2024 presidential campaign, which takes place amid major ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.”
• Is nature healing in Portland, Oregon? “Few American cities faced as much chaos as Portland over the last four years,” Natalie Fertig observed in Politico. “This proudly liberal city has endured more than 100 days of often-violent protests, a fentanyl and homelessness crisis, a pandemic—and, in arguably the nation’s boldest progressive policy experiment in recent history—decriminalization of all drugs. This November, Portland is undertaking one more chaotic act. In a sign of either hope or desperation, Rose City voters decided to throw out their entire government structure and replace it with a weaker mayor, expanded City Council and ranked choice voting.”

Presented Without Comment

Politico: [Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim] Walz Says the Electoral College ‘Needs To Go’

Also Presented Without Comment

Financial Times: Cameroon Takes Unusual Step of Insisting Its President Has Not Died 

Also Also Presented Without Comment

The Philadelphia Inquirer: This Philadelphia-Area Mother Was Shocked To See Herself in a Trump Attack Ad. She’s a Lifelong Democrat Voting for Kamala Harris.

Kimberly Burrell sat among a group of loved ones of Philadelphia’s gun violence victims in July for an interview with a national television reporter.

The gathering took place around the anniversary of the death of her 18-year-old son Darryl Pray Jr. in 2009, and Burrell was a bundle of raw emotion.

…

And though Burrell and others said they didn’t want to talk much about politics, Burrell shared some general thoughts on the challenges of inflation as a single working mother.

She’d nearly forgotten about the interview until family and friends from across the country started reaching out to the lifelong Democrat last week to tell her they’d just seen her in a political commercial — that was pro-Donald Trump.

In the Zeitgeist

The New York Mets ended the Milwaukee Brewers’ season last week in the first round of the MLB playoffs, and for one Mets player—outfielder Jesse Winker, who played for the Brewers in 2023—the animosity toward the opposing team wasn’t tempered by his victory. “As far as Milwaukee goes,” Winker said on Tuesday, “I’ll hate them forever.” (Incidentally, we have picked out our early Christmas gift for Steve.)

In response, a Milwaukee brewery decided to poke fun at Winker, who had a .199 batting average in his lone season in Milwaukee last year. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Mike and Drucker reported on get-out-the-vote operations in Pennsylvania, Nick tried to explain (🔒) why Harris won’t break with Biden, and Jonah explored (🔒) how claims of voter fraud on the right became more assertions than arguments, in the absence of any evidence. 
• On the podcasts: Sarah and David discuss Israel’s responsibilities in war during a live taping of Advisory Opinions at Duke University.  
• On the site: Mustafa Akyol looks back at Ibn Khaldun, the Islamic scholar whose work President Ronald Reagan cited.