"The latest attempts to interfere in the US election are nothing new for the Iranian regime. In our view, this regime has been undermining or attempting to undermine democracies for many years," AFP news agency quoted US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel as saying on August 12, local time. Patel said the US had previously been concerned about Iran's cyber activity. "We still have a number of tools to hold Iran accountable and we will not hesitate to use them," he said. However, the US State Department spokesman did not confirm whether Washington believed Iran was behind the cyber attack on former President Donald Trump's campaign. Meanwhile, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the issue was the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department, but reiterated a previous intelligence report that Iran was "trying to influence" the presidential election. Iran has denied hacking the Trump campaign. Last week, the Trump campaign suggested that Iran was behind a cyberattack on the campaign, stealing documents including a review of vice presidential candidate JD Vance and sending them to the press. Trump's team has warned media outlets not to republish the documents. During the 2016 election, Trump bitterly said he hoped Russia would hack into the emails of his rival Hillary Clinton to find deleted emails. However, US intelligence concluded that Russia interfered in that year's election to benefit Trump. On August 12, the FBI said it was investigating Trump's allegations. CNN, citing multiple sources, said hackers had breached the personal email account of Republican lobbyist Roger Stone and used access to Stone's email account to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official. Separately, the Washington Post reported that the FBI is also looking into an alleged hack of campaign advisers to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The agency began its investigation in June 2024, suspecting that Iran was behind an attempt to steal data from the US presidential campaign. Earlier, Microsoft reported that hackers linked to the Iranian government had attempted to break into the account of a "senior official" in the US presidential campaign in June 2024.