How U.S. election disinfo fueled foreign policy falsehoods across the Middle East
Tags: Disinformation, Social Media, Saudi Arabia, Iran, USA

By Simin Kargar and Zarine Kharazian

The 2020 U.S. elections cycle showed that election-related disinformation was significantly homegrown: while foreign interference in various forms proved to be a real threat, the amount of disinformation produced by the domestic far-right media ecosystem, populated by fringe media and personalities often catapulted to the mainstream via President Trump’s now-deleted Twitter feed, far outweighed the apparent impact of content produced by foreign state actors.

But while foreign actors rarely produced original disinformation narratives targeting the U.S. elections in 2020, they did opportunistically seize on existing ones, recycling and localizing disinformation to suit their strategic interests. In the Middle East, as then-President Trump trailed in the polls, pro-Saudi and anti-Iranian government voices feared the loss of an ally in the White House, launching campaigns on Twitter to resurrect an old controversy about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails and preemptively amplify messages of electoral fraud on the part of then-candidate Joe Biden.

These campaigns illustrate the synergies between U.S. domestic and foreign disinformation ecosystems. In addition, the involvement of Iranian opposition groups, notably Restart, in amplifying claims of electoral fraud demonstrates the role of foreign non-state actors in amplifying disinformation campaigns, and the extent to which unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud in the United States became a topic of global conversation and attracted a range of opportunistic actors in the Middle East.

The “Hillary’s emails” controversy

The 2015 revelation about former Secretary of State Clinton using a personal email server while in office prompted extensive media obsession that continued through the 2016 presidential election cycle and led to several congressional hearings, as well as FBI and State Department investigations, which concluded no compelling evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, the release of declassified CIA documents revived the Hillary’s email controversy once again. Among these documents were heavily redacted notes of former CIA director John Brennan suggesting that he had briefed former President Barack Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged attempt to link Trump, then the 2016 Republican presidential candidate, to Russia. The attempt was allegedly “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 general election. The move was interpreted as political, seeking to bolster President Trump’s claims that former Obama administration officials conspired to fabricate connections between his campaign and Russia.

Following the announcement, Trump took to Twitter with provocative messages, calling for consequences for his rivals, including former president Barack Obama, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for launching a “coup” against his administration. His tweets sparked a wave of disinformation by his supporters, condemning the “Russia hoax” and asking for an investigation into the ‘real’ matter — i.e. Hillary’s emails.