Special to WorldTribune.com

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) hackers have targeted Obama administration officials in a spate of recent cyberattacks.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the attacks were said to be linked to the arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Teheran.

The report said IRGC hackers were targeting personnel in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs as well as journalists and academics.

The IRGC is responsible for a number of attacks on U.S. government agencies in recent years, but a source told the Journal the attacks increased after the arrest of Siamak Namazi in mid-October.

“We’re aware of certain reports involving Iran,” a senior administration official told Reuters in response to the Journal story. “While I don’t have a comment on the specific reports, we are aware that hackers in Iran and elsewhere often use cyber attacks to gain information or make connections with targets of interest.”

Namazi is head of strategic planning for Crescent Petroleum, an oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates and has worked for think tanks in Washington. The report said he had been detained and interrogated regularly by the IRGC before his arrest and the IRGC had confiscated his computer after ransacking his home in Teheran.

A spokesman at Iran’s UN mission in New York told the Wall Street Journal that the accusations against the IRGC were false.

  Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office of Iranian Affairs, Report: Iran cyberattacks targeted Obama administration, Siamak Namazi, tied to recent arrest, WorldTribune.com