Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[JackRiddler]

.

My skepticism is ON. Especially about the way the corporate media tried to turn protests of several thousand condemning the initial cover-up of the shootdown (imho probably justified, but compared to literal millions for the Suleimani funeral) into imminent regime change. They never tire of this charade, and as we've seen, the shit can actually work - as happened in Bolivia.

[Harvey]

We'll see if anything comes of it I suppose.

https://southfront.org/iran-investigati ... ng-report/

[Sounder]

https://www.globalresearch.ca/west-run- ... ns/5700435

Soleimani had diplomatic immunity – and the US knew about it. But no rule, no law and no standard of ethics is respected by Washington. A behavior very much like the one of the Barbarians. General Soleimani, who was much more than a general, he was also a great diplomat, was asked by PM Abdul-Mahdi on behalf of Trump to come to Bagdad to be part of a mediation process that Trump asked PM Abdul-Mahdi to lead, to ease tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as between the US and Iran. This was an abjectly, cowardly ploy to assassinate Qassem Soleimani. – How deep can you sink? There are no words to describe the horrible crime.

[JackRiddler]

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Another real Iranian voice: "Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Setareh Sadeqi, a PhD candidate at the University of Tehran who lost family friends in the tragic Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crash. Anya and Setareh discuss recent protests in Iran sparked by the crash, which western media have framed as a popular anti-government uprising. They also talk about the recent crackdown on Iranian news and social media accounts online, including the censorship of Press TV UK."

They also talk about the purges by Instagram, Twitter and other U.S.-based services purges of whole accounts, erasing every post because a user posted pictures of Soleimani. Ostensibly the companies do this to remain in compliance with the U.S. sanctions regime! They also talk about something that cannot be emphasized enough: sanctions are war. People in Iran are dying and suffering every day because of the sanctions. It's easy for Americans to think they have nothing to do with this, or that their country is not yet at war against Iran, but Iranians know this is already war.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBGw5GMXb4c

[Harvey]

^Yes.

Liked the film, thanks. I hope FB will watch it while he's stewing in purgatory.

[Elvis]

censorship of Press TV UK

Haven't heard details of UK censoring Press TV but for a couple of days the last week I couldn't get the vdeo to stream at all. I noticed some Google items loading in the destination bar. Now the presstv video streams normally again, and no Google scripts( right word?) in the destination bar.

Was Google assisting censorship of the presstv in the US?


They just had Gordon Duff on.

https://www.presstv.com/Live

[JackRiddler]

.

Yeah, as you know yourself, the point isn't whether we endorse PressTV tout court, or RT, or AJ, or BBC, or DW, or NPRPBSRFA, or MSNBCCNNFOXCBSETC, or Chelsea Clinton's Daily Beast, or Politico (founded with the Riggs Bank fortune!). And I think seriously that some of these should be taken over and restructured, broken up, turned into public-access utilities without censorship (that would be the corporate ones, of course). But as long as these all exist in their current config, last entity I want deciding which we get to watch freely is the US national security state.

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[kelley]

generalizing of course but it seems the only people who don't recognize American propaganda as propaganda are Americans

obvious

depressing

obviously depressing

depressingly obvious

[BenDhyan]

I think most serious observers know that Iran has nukes, but so does Israel and more than Iran, but that buffer might be whittled away if enrichment continues as it is. I expect the tension with Israel to rise.

Iran begins enriching uranium at 60 percent purity near end of nuclear talks

By Emily Jacobs April 16, 2021

Iran has begun enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, its highest level ever, a top official there revealed Friday.

The move, initially revealed by Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Twitter and later confirmed by state television, comes on the final day of talks in Vienna between countries involved in the 2015 nuclear deal.

The talks had been taking place since Tuesday among all entities involved in the original Iran agreement — China, France, Russia, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union — as member countries worked to return the US to the deal.

Despite the talks, which were described as “constructive” by both sides, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran was considering enriching uranium further in response to an attack carried out by Israel on a key nuclear plant the day before.

“Of course, the security and intelligence officials must give the final reports, but apparently it is the crime of the Zionists, and if the Zionists act against our nation, we will answer it,” Rouhani claimed said during a televised cabinet meeting.

The Obama administration brokered the controversial JCPOA in 2015. The accord reduced sanctions against Iran in exchange for the country reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium needed to fuel nuclear weapons.

It also capped the purity at which Tehran could refine uranium at 3.67 percent, but did not include limitations on delivery systems and other checks on Iran being able to ultimately produce a nuclear bomb when the deal expires.

The Trump administration withdrew the US from the pact in 2018, with the then-commander-in-chief arguing that “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.”

Iran began breaching the deal shortly after, as tensions ratcheted up between Washington and Tehran.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/16/iran-begins-enriching-uranium-to-60-percent-amid-nuclear-talks/

[BenDhyan]

I would suppose some members here have been following the strange course of events occurring in the Gulf of Oman, So here's a thought, perhaps the unusual coincidence of happenings off the coast of Oman at this time, first the Mercer Street UAV event blamed on Iran*, and then the 6 ships losing positioning event with implications of Iran involvement **, and then the claimed Iranian military hijacking of one of the ships event ***, is all a ruse that has as its focus the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iow, Israel and its allies (US, UK) may be putting pressure on Iran to the effect that its future security relies on it giving up completely any plans of advancing their nuclear program.

Gantz: Iran is 10 weeks from breakout to a nuclear weapon

Tehran will be able to break out to a nuclear weapon within 10 weeks, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told diplomats from UN Security Council member states on Wednesday as tensions ratcheted up between Iran and the international community over its maritime attacks.

“Iran has violated all of the guidelines set in the JCPOA [nuclear agreement] and is only around 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon,” Gantz warned.

“Therefore,” he added, “it is time to act. The world must apply economic sanctions and take operative action against the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps,” which has targeted shipping vessels.

In recent weeks, top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Gantz have expressed alarm to the US and others that Iran is taking advantage of a long pause in negotiations to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to dramatically advance its nuclear program.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israel-to-unsc-halt-irans-brazen-ship-attacks-675793

* https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/08/us-finds-iranian-kamikaze-drone-attacked-israeli-ship-here-are-the-pics/

**https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-ships-in-gulf-of-oman-lose-control-days-after-drone-strike-on-vessel/

*** https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/03/ship-hijacked-coast-united-arab-emirates-amid-rising-tensions/

[thrulookingglass]

And yet there is no concern for American nuclear arsenal proliferation. The only nation to have dropped atomic weaponry on a foreign nation in an act of extreme hostility. What an example the US set. Paragons of peace prepare for war. Nationalism: a powerful state of mental illness.

[Harvey]

I'm still trying to comprehend how the United States of America lured a celebrated state official of another country they've been persecuting for at least seventy years to his death and (for many people) apparently succeeded in trying to pretend he was a terrorist by killing him in an act of terrorism in front of the worlds press.

US/UK/France/Saudi/Israel funded ISIS were so threatened by Iranian general Soleimani that the US had to 'take him out'. Despite being so effective against ISIS ( same terror group who murdered children across France in the run up to Macrons ascension ) that western press actually lauded Soleimani for it, he is nevertheless a major Bad Guy in the latest dropping from the alphabet game division Call of Duty franchise. Soleimani is a character that players must assassinate by drone in order to progress. A sure sign that RI peeps should re-read this entire thread and recognise that Iran is one of the major remaining planks of the 2001 plan to restructure the world (General Clark) in which we still live. Covid hysteria notwithstanding.

As I've said before, games are one of the most impressionable forms of propaganda for young people and should be kept at arms length by parents. I used to work in the industry, I know.



And on the theme of western terror, Dr Evil should note that the glut of weapons to Ukraine are already making obscure and (so far) minor headlines of thwarted terror attacks in Europe. As UK/US spies create terror cells, the new GLADIO is beginning to show itself. Please remember that others tried to inform you.

[Harvey]

Crosspost

The death cult world wreckers intend that Iran is immediately scheduled as the next state to be bulldozed by NATO dirty wars. Fighting fire with inferno seems insane, but if the game is world war then at least they're not nuts.

Press says:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/18/mahsa-amini-dozens-injured-in-iran-protests-after-death-in-custody

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/worl ... amini.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... b-protest/

https://www.rt.com/news/563230-iran-pro ... 3890181433

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/20/midd ... ndex.html/

https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/22/mah ... police-cus

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/09/2 ... ahsa-Amini

https://www.foxnews.com/world/irans-mor ... g-protests

And they'd have a point if they weren't covering for high crimes on a staggering scale themselves.


Anyway:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/24/musk-says-activating-starlink-in-response-to-blinken-on-internet

Elon Musk greenlit to activate Starlink internet for Iranians

Legal guidance by the American government on expanding internet services to Iranians was changed despite US sanctions

24 Sep 2022

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been given the green light by the United States government to activate the satellite internet service Starlink to help Iranians protesting against the death of a woman in police custody.

Access to social media and some content is tightly restricted in Iran and significant internet outages were reported across the country on Saturday, with one of the biggest mobile phone operators disrupted, leaving millions of Iranians offline.

The US Treasury Department on Friday issued guidance expanding internet services available to Iranians despite US sanctions on the country.

The move follows deadly protests around Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after being detained by “morality police” who questioned the way she was wearing her headscarf.

Hundreds of angry demonstrators have been arrested with crowds taking to the streets of major cities across Iran for eight straight nights. State television said the number of deaths in “recent riots” had risen to 35, up from 17 previously, including at least five security personnel.

We took action today to advance Internet freedom and the free flow of information for the Iranian people, issuing a General License to provide them greater access to digital communications to counter the Iranian government’s censorship.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 23, 2022

A US State Department spokesperson said the updated licence was self-executing and “anyone who meets the criteria outlined in this general license can proceed with their activities without requesting additional permissions”.

Musk could not be reached for comment or clarification regarding Starlink’s clearance to operate in Iran.

However, he said on Monday the company wanted to provide the Starlink satellite broadband service – already provided to Ukraine for its fight against Russia’s invasion – to Iranians and would ask for a sanctions exception.

Iran has curbed access to social media networks Instagram and WhatsApp amid the protests, according to residents and internet watchdog NetBlocks.

Azadeh Akbari, from the University of Twente, said the digital shutdown in Iran is “a continuation of decades of internet filtering by the Iranian government”.

She gave examples of “keyboard filtering” and the arrest of journalists as a means of cracking down on access.

Akbari added with the shutdown of global cyberspace in Iran it would be increasingly “difficult and dangerous” for members of the public to access safe messenger apps and use methods to get around the blocks.

Speaking from Capetown, South Africa, mobile video journalism publisher Yusuf Omar said the Iranian government’s attempts to limit internet access is a form of “government censorship” as well as “self-censorship” of the population.

“People we are getting in touch with stories even if they do have access to the internet for a couple of hours and want to send a video out. They are really afraid,” Omar told Al Jazeera.

President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that Iran must “deal decisively with those who oppose the country’s security and tranquility”, Iranian state media reported.

Raisi’s comments were made in a condolence telephone call to the family of a security agent stabbed to death last week, allegedly by protesters enraged over the death of Amini.

https://thecradle.co/Article/Analysis/16372

Decoding the Pentagon’s online war against Iran

From a click of a button in the US to violence on the streets of Tehran, the latest protests in Iran are being engineered and provoked from outside

By Kit Klarenberg
October 01 2022


The civil unrest in Iran in response to the recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while she was waiting at a Tehran police station, although rooted in legitimate grievances, also bears the hallmark of a western-sponsored covert war, covering multiple fronts.

Mere days after the protests erupted on 16 September, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon had initiated a wide-ranging audit of all its online psyops efforts, after a number of bot and troll accounts operated by its Central Command (CENTCOM) division – which covers all US military actions in West Asia, North Africa and South and Central Asia – were exposed, and subsequently banned by major social networks and online spaces.

The accounts were busted in a joint investigation carried out by social media research firm Graphika, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, which evaluated “five years of pro-Western covert influence operations.”

Published in late August, it attracted minimal English-language press coverage at the time, but evidently was noticed, raising concerns at the highest levels of the US government, prompting the audit.

While the Washington Post ludicrously suggested the government’s umbrage stemmed from CENTCOM’s egregious, manipulative activities which could compromise US “values” and its “moral high ground,” it is abundantly clear that the real problem was CENTCOM being exposed.

#OpIran

CENTCOM’s geographical purview includes Iran, and given the Islamic Republic’s longstanding status as a key US enemy state, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a significant proportion of the unit’s online disinformation and psychological warfare efforts were directed there.

A key strategy employed by US military psyops specialists is the creation of multiple sham media outlets publishing content in Farsi. Numerous online channels were maintained for these platforms, spanning Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and even Telegram.

In some cases too, fake journalists and pundits, with numerous “followers” on those platforms emerged, along with profile photos created via artificial intelligence.

For example, Fahim News claimed to provide “accurate news and information” on events in Iran, prominently publishing posts declaring “the regime uses all of its efforts to censor and filter the internet,” and encouraging readers to stick to online sources as a result.

Meanwhile, Dariche News claimed to be an “independent website unaffiliated with any group or organization,” committed to providing “uncensored and unbiased news” to Iranians within and without the country, in particular information on “the destructive role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in all the affairs and issues of Iran and the region.”

Their respective YouTube channels pumped out numerous short-form videos, presumably in the hope they would be mistaken for organic content, and go viral on other social networks. The researchers identified one instance in which media outlets elsewhere had embedded Dariche News content into articles.

An army of bots and trolls

Some of the fake news organizations published original material, but much of their output was recycled content from US government-funded propaganda outfits such as Radio Farda and Voice of America Farsi.

They also repurposed and shared articles from the British-based Iran International, which appears to receive arm’s length funding from Saudi Arabia, as did several fake personas attached to these outlets.

These personas frequently posted non-political content, including Iranian poetry and photos of Persian food, in order to increase their authenticity. They also engaged with real Iranians on Twitter, often joking with them about internet memes.

Pentagon bots and trolls used different narrative techniques and approaches in an attempt to influence perceptions and engender engagement. A handful promoted “hardliner” views, criticizing the Iranian government for insufficiently hawkish foreign policy while being excessively reformist and liberal domestically.

One such bogus user, a purported “political science expert,” accrued thousands of followers on Twitter and Telegram by posting content praising Shia Islam’s growing power in West Asia, while other “hardliner” accounts praised the late General Qassem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), slain in an illegal US drone strike in January 2020, as a martyr, and encouraged the wearing of hijabs.

The researchers state the purpose of these efforts was unclear, although an obvious explanation is the Pentagon sought to foster anti-government discontent among conservative Iranians, while creating lists of local “extremists” to monitor online.

Orchestrated opposition

Overwhelmingly though, Pentagon-linked accounts were viciously critical of the Iranian government, and the IRGC. Numerous Pentagon bots and trolls sought to blame food and medicine shortages on the latter, which was likened to ISIS, and posting videos of Iranians protesting and looting supermarkets captioned in Pashto, English, and Urdu.

More sober posts criticized Tehran for redistributing much-needed food to give to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, while others highlighted embarrassing incidents, such as a reported power outage that caused the country’s chess team to lose an international online tournament.

Furthermore, multiple fake users claimed to seek “justice for the victims of #Flight752”, referring to the Ukraine International Airlines flight accidentally shot down by the IRGC in January 2020.

Using hashtags such as #PS752 and #PS752justice hundreds of times, they blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally for the incident.

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February, these accounts used Persian versions of widely-trending hashtags #No_To_Putin and #No_To_War – themselves overwhelmingly disseminated on Twitter by pro-Ukraine bot and troll accounts, according to separate research.

The users condemned Khamenei’s verbal support of Putin and accused Iran of supplying drones to Moscow, which it was claimed were used to kill civilians.

They also pushed the narrative that Iran’s collusion with Russia would result in adverse political and economic repercussions for Tehran, while making unflattering comparisons between Khamenei and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“One has sold Iran to Russia and ordered their peoples’ murder,” one account tweeted. “The other is wearing a combat uniform alongside his people and has stopped the colonization of Ukraine by Russia with all his might.”

Scattershot fury

There were also cloak-and-dagger initiatives intended to damage Iran’s standing in neighboring countries, and undermine its regional influence. Much of this work seems to have been concerned with spreading panic and alarm, and creating a hostile environment for Iranians abroad.

For instance, accounts targeting audiences in Afghanistan claimed that Quds Force personnel were infiltrating Kabul posing as journalists in order to crush opposition to the Taliban. They also published articles from a US military-linked website that claimed on the basis of zero evidence that the bodies of dead refugees who’d fled to Iran were being returned to their families back home with missing organs.

Yet another damaging false narrative perpetuated by this cluster in late 2021 and early 2022 was that the IRGC was forcing Afghan refugees to join militias fighting in Syria and Yemen, and that those who refused were being deported.

Iraq was a country of particular interest to the Pentagon’s cyber warriors, with memes widely shared throughout Baghdad and beyond depicting IRGC influence in the country as a destructive disease, and content claiming Iraqi militias, and elements of the government, were effective tools of Tehran, fighting to further Iran’s imperial designs over the wider West Asia.

Militias were also accused of killing Iraqis in rocket strikes, engineering droughts by damaging water supply infrastructure, smuggling weapons and fuel out of Iraq and into Syria, and fuelling the country’s crystal meth epidemic.

Another cluster of Pentagon accounts focused on Iran’s involvement in Yemen, publishing content on major social networks critical of the Ansarallah-led de-facto government in Sanaa, accusing it of deliberately blocking humanitarian aid deliveries, acting as an unquestioning proxy of Tehran and Hezbollah, and closing bookstores, radio stations, and other cultural institutions.

Several of their posts blamed Iran for the deaths of civilians via landmine, on the basis Tehran may have supplied them.

Laying the ground

Other CENTCOM psychological warfare (psywar) narratives have direct relevance to the protests that have engulfed Iran.

There was a particular focus among one group of bots and trolls on women’s rights. Dozens of posts compared Iranian women’s opportunities abroad with those in Iran – one meme on this theme contrasted photos of an astronaut with a victim of violent spousal abuse – while others promoted protests against the hijab.

Alleged government corruption and rising living costs were also recurrently emphasized, particularly in respect of food and medicine – production of which in Iran is controlled by the IRGC, a fact CENTCOM’s online operatives repeatedly drew attention to.

Women’s rights, corruption, and the cost of living – the latter of which directly results from suffocating US sanctions – are all key stated motivating factors for the protesters.

Despite the rioters’ widespread acts of violence and vandalism, targeted at civilians and authorities alike, such as the destruction of an ambulance ferrying police officers away from the scene of a riot, they also claim to be motivated by human rights concerns.

Establishment and fringe journalists and pundits have dismissed as conspiracy theories, any suggestions that protests in Iran and beyond are anything other than organic and grassroots in nature.

Yet, clear proof of foreign direction and sponsorship abounds, not least in the very public face of the anti-hijab movement, Masih Alinejad, who for many years has encouraged Iranian women to ceremonially burn their headscarves from the confines of an FBI safehouse in New York City, then publicizes the images online, which travel round the world and back via social media and mainstream news outlets.

A regime-change war by other means

Alinejad’s activities have generated a vast amount of fawning and credulous media coverage, without a single journalist or outlet questioning whether her prominent role in the supposedly grassroots, locally-initiated protest movement is affiliated with foreign hostile interference.

This is despite Alinejad posing for photos with former CIA director Mike Pompeo, and receiving a staggering $628,000 in US federal government contracts since 2015.

Much of these funds flowed from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US government agency that oversees propaganda platforms such as Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America, the latter of which has produced a Farsi-language show fronted by Alinejad for seven years.

These clusters of social media posts may appear innocuous and authentic in an age of click-bait and viral fake news, yet when aggregated and analysed, they form a potent and potentially dangerous weapon which it turns out is one of many in the Pentagon’s regime-change arsenal.