His next post, just two hours later, appeared to suggest that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by the wild claim that Iran had helped rig the 2020 US elections. “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with the United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
The post linked to an article on Just the News, a conspiracy-filled, pro-Trump outlet that offered no explanation for its claim other than the vague claim that Iran conducted “a sophisticated election influence effort” in 2020.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the alleged interference was involved in the decision to attack Iran or what the alleged interference actually entailed.
Trump has spent the years since 2020 promoting a number of baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged. Since his return to the White House last year, he has empowered his administration to use those debunked conspiracy theories to inform decision-making, from the raid of the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, to lawsuits over unredacted voter lists.
It’s not clear exactly what alleged Iranian interference Trump was referring to in his Truth Social post, but Patrick Byrne, a prominent conspiracy theorist who urged Trump to seize voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, claims to WIRED that it relates to a broader conspiracy theory that also involves Venezuela and China.
Like most election-related conspiracy theories, this one is complex and based on no solid evidence. Broadly speaking, the conspiracy theory, which first emerged in the weeks and months following the 2020 election and has become more complex in the years since, claims that the Venezuelan government has been rigging elections around the world for decades by creating the voting software company Smartmatic as a means to remotely rig elections. (Smartmatic has repeatedly denied all allegations against it and successfully sued right-wing outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)
Byrne laid out the entire conspiracy theory in a 45-minute-long presentation posted on X in 2024. His claims have been widely shared within the poll-denial community since being posted.
Burn claims that Iran’s role in all this was to hide the money transactions. “They act as payees. They hold certain payments that will disclose [operation] Out of the banking system, out of the SWIFT system so you can’t see it,” Byrne claimed during this presentation. “This is done through the transfer pricing mechanism that runs through Iran in oil.”
When asked for evidence of Iran’s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne’s claims have ever been verified, and most have been repeatedly refuted. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, there are two actual documented instances of Iranian election interference: In 2021, the Justice Department charged two Iranians with conducting an influence campaign designed to target and intimidate American voters. And in 2024, three Iranian hackers working for the government were accused of compromising the Trump campaign as part of an effort to disrupt the 2024 election.
However, Byrne’s allegations are completely different. And while Byrne’s claims have been circulating among online conspiracy groups for years, they have been emailed directly to Trump in recent months by Peter Ticktin, an attorney who has known Trump since they attended the New York Military Academy together. Ticktin also represents superstar Tina Peters in her refusal to contest a former Colorado election official.
<a href