The CIA and the Iranian
experiment
by Thierry Meyssan*
The news of alleged election fraud has spread
through Tehran like wildfire, pitching ayatollah Rafsanjani’s
supporters against ayatollah Khamenei’s in street
confrontations. This chaotic situation is secretly stirred by
the CIA which has been spreading confusion by flooding Iranians
with contradicting SMS messages. Thierry Meyssan recounts this
psychological warfare experiment.
In March 2000, the Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright admitted that the Eisenhower administration
organized a regime change in 1953 in Iran and that this
historical event explained the current hostility of Iranians
towards the United States. Last week, during the speech he
addressed to Muslims in Cairo, President Obama officially
recognized that « in the midst of the cold war the United States
played a role in the toppling of a democratically elected
Iranian government » [1].
Is History repeating itself? Washington
renounced to a military attack on Iran and has dissuaded Israel
to take such an initiative. In order to «change the regime», the
Obama administration prefers to play the game of covert actions
– less dangerous but with a more unpredictable outcome. After
the Iranian presidential elections, huge demonstrations in the
streets of Tehran are pitching supporters of president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ali Khamenei on one side, to
supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and former
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on the other. The
demonstrations are a sign of a profound division in the Iranian
society between a nationalist proletariat and a bourgeoisie
upset at being held back from economic globalization [4].
With its covert actions, Washington is trying to weigh on the
events to topple the re-elected president.
Once again, Iran is an experimental field for
innovative subversive methods. CIA is relying in 2009 on a new
weapon: control of cell phones. Since the democratization of
mobile phones, Anglo-Saxon secret services have increased their
interception capability. While wired phones’ tapping requires
the installation of branch circuits – and therefore local
agents, tapping of mobile phones can be done remotely using the
Echelon network. However, this system cannot intercept Skype
mobile phones communications, which explains the success of
Skype telephones in conflict areas [5].
The National Security Agency (NSA) therefore lobbied world
Internet Service Providers to require their cooperation. Those
who accepted have received huge retribution [6].
In countries under their occupation —Iraq,
Afghanistan and Pakistan—, the Anglo-Saxons intercept all
telephone communication, whether mobile or wired. The goal is
not to obtain full transcripts of any given conversation, but to
identify « social networks ». In other words, telephones are
surveillance bugs which make it possible to know who anyone is
in touch with. Firstly, the hope is to identify resistance
networks.
Secondly, telephones make it possible to
locate identified targets and «neutralize» them. This is why in
February 2008, the Afghan rebels ordered various operators to
stop their activity daily, from 5PM to 3AM, in order to prevent
the Anglo-Saxons to follow their whereabouts. The relay antennas
of those that refused to comply where destroyed [7].
On the contrary, with the exception of a
telephone exchange which was accidentally hit, Israeli forces
made sure not to hit telephone exchanges in Gaza during
Operation Cast Lead from December 2008 to January 2009. This is
a complete change in strategy. Since the Gulf War, the most
prevalent strategy was colonel John A. Warden’s « five circles
theory »: the bombing of telephone infrastructures was
considered a strategic objective to both confuse populations and
to cut communication lines between commanding centers and
fighters. Now the opposite applies: telecommunication
infrastructures must be protected. During the bombings in Gaza,
the operator Jawwal [8]
offered additional talk time to its users – officially to help
them but de facto serving Israel’s interests. Going one step
further, Anglo-Saxons and Israeli secrets services developed
psychological warfare methods based on an extensive use of
mobile phones. In July 2008, after the exchange of prisoners and
remains between Israel and Hezbollah, robots placed tens of
thousands of calls to Lebanese mobile phones. A voice speaking
in Arabic was warning against participating in any resistance
activity and belittled Hezbollah. The Lebanese minister of
telecommunications, Jibran Bassil [9],
files a complaint to the UN against this blatant violation of
the country’s sovereignty [10].
Following the same approach, tens of thousands of Lebanese and
Syrians received an automatic phone call in October 2008 to
offer them 10 million dollars for any information leading to the
location and freeing of Israeli prisoners. People interested in
collaborating were invited to call a number in the UK [11].
This method has now been used in Iran to
bluff the population, to spread shocking news and to channel the
resulting anger.
First, SMS were sent during the night of the
counting of the votes, according to which the Guardian Council
of the Constitution (equivalent to a constitutional court) had
informed Mir-Hossein Mousavi of his victory. After that, the
announcing of the official results — the re-election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad with 64 % of cast votes — seemed like a huge fraud.
However, three days earlier, M. Mousavi and his friends were
considering a massive victory of M. Ahmadinejad as certain and
were trying to explain it by unbalanced campaigns. Indeed the ex
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was detailing his grievances
in an open letter. The US polling institutes in Iran were
predicting a 20 points lead for M. Ahmadinejad over M. Mousavi
[12].
M. Mousavi victory never seemed possible, even if it is probable
that some fraud accentuated the margin between the two
candidates.
Secondly, Iranian citizens were selected or
volunteered on the Internet to chat on Facebook or to subscribe
to Twitter feeds. They received information —true or false—
(still via SMS) about the evolution of the political crisis and
the ongoing demonstrations. These anonymous news posts were
spreading news of gun fights and numerous deaths which to this
day have not been confirmed. Because of an unfortunate calendar
overlap, Twitter was supposed to suspend its service for a night
to allow for some maintenance of its systems. The US State
Department intervened to ask them to postpone it [13].
According to the New York Times, these operations contributed to
spread defiance in the population [14].
Messages describing death threats, police
bursting into homes, etc. sent by authors who cannot be
identified or located.
Simultaneously, in a new type of effort, the
CIA is mobilizing anti-Iranian militants in the United States
and in the United Kingdom to increase the chaos. A Practical
Guide to revolution in Iran was distributed to them, which
contains a number of recommendations, including:
set
Twitter accounts feeds to Tehran time zone;
centralize
messages on the following Twitter accounts @stopAhmadi, #iranelection
and #gr88 ;
official
Iranian State websites should not be attacked. « Let the US
military take care of it » (sic).
When applied, these recommendations make it
impossible to authenticate any Twitter messages. It is
impossible to know if they are being sent by witnesses of the
demonstrations in Tehran or by CIA agents in Langley, and it is
impossible to distinguish real from false ones. The goal is to
create more and more confusion and to push Iranians to fight
amongst themselves.
Army general staffs everywhere in the world
are closely following the events in Tehran. They are trying to
evaluate the efficiency of this new subversion method in the
Iranian experimental field. Evidently, the destabilization
process worked. But it is unclear if the CIA will be able to
channel demonstrators to do what the Pentagon has renounced to
do, and what they do not want to do themselves : to change the
regime and put an end to the Islamic revolution.
1]
« Obama
Speech In Cairo »,
Voltaire Network, 6 June 2009.
[2]
«
BP-Amoco, coalition pétrolière anglo-saxonne
», Arthur Lepic, Voltaire Network, June 10 2004.
[3]
On the 1953 coup, the reference work is All the Shah’s Men :
An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by
Stephen Kinzer, John Wiley & Sons éd (2003), 272 pp.
[4]
«
La société iranienne paralysée
», Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 5 février 2004.
[5]
«
Taliban using Skype phones to dodge MI6
», Glen Owen, Mail Online, September 13 2008.
[6]
«
NSA offering ’billions’ for Skype eavesdrop
solution
», Lewis Page, The Register, February 12 2009.
[7]
«
Taliban Threatens Cell Towers
», Noah Shachtman, Wired, February 25 2008.
[8]
Jawwal belongs to PalTel, Palestinian billionaire Munib Al-Masri’s
company.
[9]
Jibran Bassil is one of the main leaders of the ‘Courant
patriotique libre’, the nationalist party of Michel Aoun.
[10]
« Freed Lebanese say they will keep fighting Israel »,
Associated Press, July 17 2008.
[11]
The author of this article witnessed these phone calls. Also see
« Strange Israeli phone calls alarm Syrians. Israeli
intelligence services accused of making phone calls to Syrians
in bid to recruit agents », Syria News Briefing, December
4 2008.
[12]
Quoted in «
Ahmadinejad won. Get over it
», Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Politico,
June 15 2009.
[13]
« U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran », Reuters,
June 16 2009.
[14]
«
Social Networks Spread Defiance Online
», Brad Stone and Noam Cohen, The New York Times, June 15
2009.
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