WHAT AN IRANIAN CYBERATTACK WOULD LOOK LIKE

Shortly after Iran lobbed two-dozen missiles into two U.S. military bases in Iraq, which caused no casualties, its foreign minister tweeted that Iran had “concluded” its “proportionate” response to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Few people in the U.S. military are taking this statement at face value. Iran is likely to step up its harassment of the U.S. using its network of proxy groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. If history is any guide, that response will include cyberattacks against the U.S. government, companies and high-profile individuals—and possibly even the 2020 elections.

“I don’t think Iran is finished,” says Jon Bateman, a former Iran expert at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The door is open, he says, to “follow-on actions that are more covert or more plausibly deniable. Cyber classically is one of the tools.”

Although Iran isn’t