Trump ties Iran attack to his 2020 election defeat.

On Saturday, Donald Trump seemed to connect the large‑scale strike he ordered on Iran with his ongoing assertions that he lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden, posting on social media about accusations that Tehran interfered in U.S. presidential elections.

“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump,” his Truth Social post read, “and now faces renewed war with United States.”

The statement, posted in the early moments of the Iranian bombardment, echoed the headline of a piece he shared from Just the News, a outlet supportive of Trump. The article claimed that Iranian intelligence attempted to sabotage Trump’s 2020 re‑election effort through multiple election‑influence tactics, and added that Iran also acted against him in 2024, when he defeated Kamala Harris at the ballot box.

This marks the second military action under Trump’s administration in which he referenced claims about the 2020 election. He posted comparable remarks in January, shortly after ordering a Delta Force operation targeting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump reshared links that revived debunked conspiracy theories alleging Venezuelan meddling in the 2020 vote through manipulation of voting machines.

Earlier, he suggested endorsement of those ideas in a post that linked to a podcast discussing the Venezuela claim, adding: “We must devote all our energy and power to ELECTION FRAUD!!” As CuriosityNews reported in November, the Justice Department launched an investigation into the long‑discredited Venezuela theory last year.

The White House declined to comment on the matter.

Although a key principle of the MAGA movement’s America First stance is opposition to overseas conflicts, another prominent focus has been to pursue Trump’s election complaints.

While experts have dismissed the Venezuela accusations as unsubstantiated, Iran has indeed faced accusations of election interference, even from officials serving in the Biden administration.

In August 2024, amid the presidential race, officials asserted that Iran was behind a breach of internal Trump campaign files that were later leaked to reporters. One of the documents contained research on JD Vance. The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and CISA stated that Iran carried out the intrusion “to compromise former President Trump’s campaign,” adding that the intelligence community “is confident that Iranians, through social engineering and other methods, sought access to individuals with direct ties to the presidential campaigns of both parties.”

Three suspected Iranian hackers were subsequently charged.

It is also documented that in 2020 officials claimed Iran orchestrated a bizarre email hoax in which voters registered as Democrats received threatening messages urging them to vote for Trump. The messages were poorly forged to appear as though they originated from the Proud Boys extremist group, but investigations traced them back to Iran.