New York (CNN) Facebook said Friday that it had removed 82 pages, groups, and accounts that were run from Iran but targeting people in the US and the UK.

The company said it had first discovered the pages a week ago and that it was making public its initial findings due to the upcoming US midterm elections.

"The Page administrators and account owners typically represented themselves as US citizens, or in a few cases UK citizens — and they posted about politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration," Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said in a blog post

Gleicher said on a call with reporters Friday that the company had not yet been able to determine if the operation was tied to the Iranian government.

The accounts were followed by more than 1 million people, Facebook said.

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