The revelation that Iran tried to leak Trump campaign materials to the Biden campaign has left little doubt about whom the Islamic republic wants to win — or, more to the point, lose — the looming U.S. presidential election.
It isn’t the only foreign government picking sides.
Brazil’s president is “sympathetic” to Vice President Kamala Harris, and European leaders also have signaled their preference for Ms. Harris. The German Foreign Ministry has been aggressive in deriding former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has Hungarian President Viktor Orban firmly in his corner.
Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year suggested that he preferred President Biden because he was more “predictable” than Mr. Trump. More recently, seemingly tongue-in-cheek, or perhaps foot-in-mouth, he said he preferred Ms. Harris because of her “expressive and infectious laugh.”
Venturing into a foreign election is proclaimed to be gauche in elite global circles, but American politics often proves too enticing.
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“America is by far the world’s most powerful nation, and so many nations want to shape the outcome of presidential elections to their liking. There’s nothing new about that, but recent elections have seen far more brazen and aggressive efforts by international leaders to try to influence the outcome,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia.
He said the lineup of nations behind each candidate shouldn’t be surprising.
“The basic pattern is what one would expect: The more liberal leaders would prefer Harris, and the more conservative ones would prefer Trump,” he said.
Mr. Farnsworth said some foreign nations do more than share their preferences.
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran would like to take a shot at Mr. Trump, literally. They say it is retaliation for the 2020 drone slaying of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force.
This week, American intelligence agencies revealed new details on Iran-backer hackers who stole Trump campaign emails. The hackers then sent some of the information, unsolicited, to news outlets and the Biden campaign, which has now become the Harris campaign.
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U.S. officials said there is no indication that the campaign recipients responded.
The House Judiciary Committee has opened an inquiry into Iran’s attempt to put its thumb on the balance of the election.
“Iran’s actions raise serious concerns about foreign election interference targeting President Trump’s campaign to support President Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s campaigns,” Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, wrote in a letter asking the FBI for answers.
When Mr. Biden was the candidate, he drew unabashed support from Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Now that Ms. Harris is the Democratic Party nominee, the Brazilian is “sympathetic” to her, Bloomberg News reported.
Western European leaders were also generally politically aligned with Mr. Biden and, to the extent they knew about her, Ms. Harris.
Newly minted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party reportedly briefed Ms. Harris’ campaign on how to win the election.
Ms. Harris is making the foreign leaders part of her campaign attack on Mr. Trump.
“I’m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States. And world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,” she said when she faced off against the former president in their only debate earlier this month.
That seemed to get under Mr. Trump’s skin.
He pointed to Mr. Orban, Hungary’s president, as countering evidence.
“Look, Viktor Orban said it. He said the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,” the former president said.
World leaders paid close attention to the debate, according to the BBC, which said the showdown drew attention from Moscow to Beijing to those involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Mr. Putin’s team was particularly miffed that his name was mentioned repeatedly, including when Ms. Harris told Mr. Trump that the Russian leader would “eat you for lunch.”
“We don’t like this and hope they will keep our president’s name out of this,” a spokesman told the BBC.
Iran’s hack has drawn universal condemnation.
The Biden administration has also scolded Hungary for Mr. Orban’s deep involvement in the race. The U.S. ambassador delivered a rebuke in a speech this month.
In citing foreign leaders’ disdain for Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris follows a path blazed by Sen. John Kerry in 2004, when he was the Democratic candidate trying to unseat President George W. Bush.
Mr. Kerry said he had “met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy.’ Things like that.”
That claim backfired on Mr. Kerry, who refused to say which leaders were privately badmouthing the sitting U.S. president. Indeed, a review of Mr. Kerry’s schedules raised questions about whether he even had such meetings during the campaign.
Still, it’s no surprise that foreign leaders have thoughts about U.S. elections.
When Mr. Biden dropped out of the race in July, Bloomberg News reported that foreign leaders largely greeted the decision pragmatically. Many saw it as a move to help prevent Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.
“Only the ‘bad guys’ want to see Trump win,” Bloomberg reported, citing one Eastern European official.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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