Friday, April 24, 2015

Iran vs. America in Yemen and the Gulf

With the tensions in Yemen increasing and Iran and the US backing different sides, it was only a matter of time before the two found themselves at odds. While the US has not participated in the bombing, according to the Saudi news organization Al-Arabiya, they've participated in aerial refueling and other methods of logistical support (including rescuing 2 Saudi pilots whose plane either malfunctioned or was shot down). Several days ago it was reported that an Iranian convoy bearing weapons intended for the Houthi rebels was en route to Yemen. The United States redeployed naval assets and it appears as though the convoy (which includes armed ships) has reversed course and is headed back towards Iran.

The United States has a qualitative advantage militarily and in my estimation these events are a perfect example of this. Iran knows that their naval forces cannot possibly win a conventional battle with the United States, and even approaching the fleet is a dangerous escalation. The situation is quite different than that in Syria for a variety of reasons. While Iran has no trouble sending paramilitary fighters, arms and logistical support to Syria and Hezbollah in Syria, it is much more difficult to send so much through such a busy waterway at a time when the world's attention on focused on Yemen.

There is a not so fine line between supporting guerrilla forces and engaging a military might on its own terms. Iran has always worked asymmetrically (e.g. in Bahrain) and while they are habitual braggarts (Iran's military posturing) their actions tend to be closer to this than brinksmanship. The results here are unsurprising, and underscore the priorities of the two sides; the US wants to preserve hegemony, and while Iran lacks the power to directly confront the US, there are others ways it hopes to use to get around this in its quest for regional supremacy and international recognition.
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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Iran Deal Framework Thoughts

While the framework of the Iran nuclear deal is by no means "perfectly reassuring" (Iran won't abandon all nuclear enrichment and R&D, and probably won't join the Convention on Nuclear Safety), there are many very good clauses included, that hawks and doves alike should be pleased about.

Key points from the JCPOA:



  • Centrifuges reduced to 6104, with 5060 able to enrich uranium and all of them are IR-1, Iran's first generation and least capable centrifuge
  • A major reduction (97%) in Iran's LEU (low-enriched uranium). While it remains unclear how exactly this will happen, it is believed that this will be due to a mixture of dilution and shipping extra stocks out of country (probably to Russia)
  • All excess centrifuges will be put into IAEA monitored storage
  • Fordow will be converted and heavily restricted from nuclear activities for 15 years
  • Iran's later generations of centrifuges will not be used for 10 years
  • IAEA will have 'regular' access to all of Iran's nuclear facilities (including Natanz and what will be a formerly nuclear site, Fordow)
  • IAEA will have access to the supply chain and will also have access to and surveillance of uranium mines and mills for 25 years
  • Iran will sign the Additional Protocol of the NPT
  • Arak will be redesigned, and made incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium and its core will be either destroyed or taken out of country
  • Iran will receive sanctions relief IFF it abides by the terms (IAEA will address enrichment, Fordow, Arak, PMD, and transparency)
  • IAEA has to VERIFY Iran has taken the right steps before sanctions are removed 
  • US Sanctions on Iran for human rights, terrorism, and ballistic missiles remain in place

A common refrain from hawks is that Iran has refused to address PMD (possible military dimensions), and has worked on developing its ballistic missile program. These concerns are valid. They've also worried about IAEA access to sensitive sites, and centrifuge R&D.

There are clauses in the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) which address all of these. If this is in fact accurate, the deal looks to be quite good.

There are a few drawbacks included, such as the continuation of enrichment at Natanz, though limiting the enrichment to a relatively low number of first generation centrifuges strictly limits Iran's enrichment capabilities. Jeffrey Lewis wrote here about the type of centrifuges used and how the number of total centrifuges operational is less important than how modern the centrifuges are.

Another possible downside to the JCPOA is the removal of sanctions. It remains unclear exactly under what circumstances the sanctions would be removed, how they would be removed, and if the conditions of removal are violated, how and how quickly the sanctions would be reimplemented. It seems as though only nuclear related sanctions are to be removed, which leaves quite a few sanctions left over.

One of the key components in the JCPOA is that the IAEA has to VERIFY and CONFIRM. Previously the IAEA has been unable to do this, so for this to be the case, Iran has to give MORE than it has in the past. This is a clear victory for the West. Also understated is the access to the supply chain granted under the JCPOA. If Iran were to secretly stash some nuclear materials and create a new nuclear site it would be much easier to take from an earlier stage in the process rather than from a facility that is already monitored by the IAEA.

Overall the deal looks very good for the West, though it is still not signed and completed so terms may change. If this framework is in fact accurate, Iran has conceded a lot (with the exception of Natanz which in my opinion looks like this is what the P5+1 'gave up' in exchange for other concessions). It is quite telling that the conservative editor of Iran's Kayhan newspaper Shariatmadari said Iranian nuclear negotiators: "We've given them a horse with saddle and received back its corpse."
If the most anti-American factions of the Iranian elite are upset with the deal thinking they gave up too much, then it is a good deal for the West.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015

The Ayatollah's Spam Bots

I noticed a few hours ago a rash of spam bots on Twitter promoting Ayatollah Khamenei's letter 'To the Youth in Europe and North America' while searching for something which would seem to be completely unrelated. The bots appear to be using the reasonable hashtags #Letter4u and #LetterForAll in every tweet along with a mixture of completely irrelevant (and nonsensical) ones such as #CNN, #Canada and #StandWithIsrael, and a photo with a quote from Khamenei. In every tweet there is a shortened link which redirects to Khamenei's website and the letter.



The bots seem to be on some sort of cycle where accounts post a pattern of tweets in a particular order.


There are hundreds if not thousands of accounts, most of them with over 10000 tweets. Twitter has a limit of 1000 tweets per day, and the accounts seem to have been created with this in mind.

Many of the accounts use fake photos taken from a variety of places. Some of them show celebrities, while others journalists or other media personalities.



.@AndrewWrites thought you should be aware of this: someone using your photo and spreading pro-#Iran govt propaganda pic.twitter.com/2BXUdBZSR5
— Morgan Carlston (@MorganCarlston) March 22, 2015




As far as I can tell, the bots started around 10 days ago and have continued tweeting incessantly. The timing makes me think that this is in response to the letter from the 47 GOP senators, but as Holly Dagres noted in early February of this year, something similar happened on Instagram with spammed photos and quotes and hashtags. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but I believe there is a connection to the letter.


UPDATE #1: Some of the hashtags used by the spam bots (in addition to #Letter4u and #Letter4all). From my count that is 67 hashtags co-opted by the spam bots (not counting the 2 'letter' ones). They appear to repeat every hour or so on a loop.






































UPDATE #2:
Quite a few of the accounts sending the spam have been suspended! I've been on a mission tweeting to people whose photos were used by the attackers, and it looks like at least quite a few of the fake accounts are suspended. Twitter searches for "Iron Dome" and "Stand With Israel", "Netanyahu", #GazaUnderAttack, #CharlieHebdo, and #JeSuisCharlie don't result in hundreds of spam tweets anymore. Unfortunately hashtags like #BBCNews, #AFP, #IslamicState, are still clogged, but kudos to Twitter and the support folks for finally doing something about this obnoxious nonsense.

UPDATE #3:
There is a new set of spam bots that has been operational for just over a week which I'd not seen yet.

They also link to some youtube videos, and a file at 4shared.com which is apparently owned by someone who is named here. The name again seems to be a fake.



They use an entirely different set of hashtags including:















I hope that Twitter does something about this parallel set of spam bots, and if this is a real name they are dealt with appropriately.

UPDATE #4:
All of the spam bot accounts that I have seen are suspended! I've tried searching for all the various hashtags and nothing shows up. Hopefully this is permanent and the spam bots don't start up again.

UPDATE #5:
The bots are back in town


UPDATE #6:
More bots
they appear to be using some strange service or hack to post these tweets. usually TweetDeck will tell me what app or site the user is using to post their tweets (so here is my tweet showing I use TweetDeck). When something like this showing "TweetDeck" or "Twitter Web Client" shows up, the text is a clickable link. These clickable links either don't lead anywhere or they redirect to sites that have invalid security certificates. 

UPDATE #7:
The bots are still going and Twitter doesn't care. Just counting these 10 accounts there are close to 900k tweets now (this screenshot was taken a few days ago and each bot posts just under 1k tweets per day)

Including this other account which I neglected to include there are over 1 million spam tweets. I find it strange that they wouldn't care about halting this.

UPDATE #8:
The bots have evidently ceased tweeting. They appear to be still active accounts and not banned or suspended, but none of the ones I am familiar with have tweeted in 15 hours. Hopefully this is the end of the plague, but they've proven malleable and capable of change so I am not too optimistic.


UPDATE #9:
Khamenei released another open letter, and coincidentally an inordinate number of bots started tweeting his nonsense. The letter was released yesterday, and the bots started tweeting immediately. The patterns of tweeting are different (it seems one account will send around 10 very quickly, and then another account will emulate this), but the fact that they are also using a service spoofer, and they seem to have started tweeting this letter almost immediately makes me think there is a connection to the regime. There are still some incompetencies including broken hashtags, but they are using mostly photos of people that appear to be moderately realistic (compare to the last set where there were photos of an Orthodox Jew tweeting Islamist rhetoric). 






Lastly the profile pictures do appear to be stolen, though as I mentioned they are much less suspicious than previous versions. 

At the same time, it appears as though several Iranian (and non-Iranians) journalists that had tweeted about the Ayatollah's letter have been suspended by Twitter per Iranian government request? At the same time Twitter ignores this same government's spam bots abusing its service? 

UPDATE #10:
Another weird development. It appears as though the spam continues, and the spamming accounts are not blocked, but their spam tweets aren't also showing up and searching for the hashtags used results in no results. To test this, I tweeted with the #Letter4U hashtag and it did show up in the search results. I also tried this with #CommonWorry and a similar thing happened




UDATE #11 (12/15/15):
Another strange development. A series of bots tweeting in Dutch about Khamenei's letter. This group has between 7000 and 63000 followers, follows 18-63 accounts, has tweeted 138-163 times (as of this update), and has 'liked' 71-79 tweets. They are all using the same service spoofing methods as previous bots. I am curious why they chose to tweet in Dutch and if there are parallel set-ups in other languages. I would suspect that the followers are bought. 




accounts used: QuyhgMelton
RebeccaOyiuhjy
NneitensteinAa
MikDean201
RarickR16
QoscarUrian
mui_rebecca
Second group:
PeterStekiel
Ania_Niedieck
Nina_Braun12
B__Muller
OY123121

Taking names and photos from different accounts to create spam accounts

UPDATE #12 (12/16/15):
I found some German spam bots tweeting about the letter: 
kluge_diana
ZManuela2
DuerrJurgen
mahler_stefanie
eric_wagner0
donnacasshrist1
flix_schulz
KrugerRobert5
tracyspeterson

They have very different metrics than the Dutch set. Namely, less followers and more tweets. 


UPDATE #13 (12/16/15):
More bots, posting graphics about Khamenei's letter, or terrorism or whatever. Using trending hashtags in all different languages.
Also the bots have figured out how to get past Twitter's filtering of the #Letter4U and #CommonWorry hashtags





UPDATE #14 (12/21/15)
The bots from Update #13 have been suspended, while the bots from Update #12 ceased tweeting 6 days ago.
However, another set of new bots with quite a few followers have emerged. These look like the most sophisticated by far, even though they clearly are bots. They tweet without links or photos at times, and do so in a way that makes it seem as though they are real users. It is clear they are not because these bots copy each other verbatim. These changes appear to have fooled whatever basic filter Twitter's staff implemented to mute them. The bots tweet in at least 2 languages, and I would suspect they use more than just these two. As the last 8 months have demonstrated Twitter has no interest in stopping regime sanctioned spam bot floods, while they BANNED Sputnik_INTL a clearly marked parody account mocking the "news" org Sputnik. Curious that their actions have supported Russia and Iran... 






UPDATE #15 (12/22/15):
There is now a group of MeK bots tweeting and retweeting each other about Iran regime abuses and various other current affairs news. They are also using the #Letter4U hashtag sometimes which the filter put in place by Twitter is incapable of catching. The bots link to an MeK site where news stories (or propaganda) are hosted. These are often taken verbatim from other sites.


UPDATE #16 (02/05/16):
The author and journalist Azadeh Moaveni wrote for Foreign Policy about attempts from Iranian intelligence to entrap her and to also get advice on how to promote the #Letter4U campaign. There clearly are major deficiencies in the execution of the outreach program. I also stumbled upon a bizarre group that set up a booth at Wayne State University near Detroit (and Dearborn, Michigan) to promote the Ayatollah's message and letters. This group seems to be affiliated with a Canadian NGO. It is unclear if any laws are being broken by promoting Iran regime propaganda, but they've not seem to gained much attention so far so I would assume its not of great concern at the moment. 
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