Proof: "Israeli Effort" (?) to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #Iran Election

[Nu Kua]

This article was sent to us by the author with permission to reprint in full. I am only printing an excerpt here, please check out the article for screen shots of 'tweets" and such.

Note too, this is not from some crazed "Arab extremist" website. This is work done "Charting Stocks"- a website mostly dedicated to stock market news. They are data-oriented, interested in numbers and such.

The author does make a few jumps to conclusion that are arguably unwarranted. I, too, am inclined to believe in a "vast Zionist conspiracy" of a sort, based on the history of such events as well as current activities. Yet to be honest, at this point, the information provided in the article doesn't prove any of that, only points to "signs" of such, and only proves that something is very fishy and smelly in regards to how "the word" was spread via Twitter.

So imho, the authors conclusion-jumps doesn't change the story that the "Twitter Revolution" research shows.

Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.


Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent -
@StopAhmadi
@IranRiggedElect
@Change_For_Iran


I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits).

There’s no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel’s population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS.

Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter!

Meet The Spammers
IranRiggedElect
3146 followers. 31 friends.
340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

Change_for_Iran
14,000 followers. 0 friends
117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
No retweets

IranElection09
800 followers. 9 friends.
196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it’s Farsi)
Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

StopAhmadi
6199 followers. 53 friends.
1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
All tweets in English
Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

mohamadreza
1433 followers. 142 friends
(protected account. cant see data)

The following all have the same photo in their profile and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.



...Disclaimer: Before I get attacked as being an Anti-Semite,you should know that I am half Jewish. Alternatively, I hope that people do not misinterpret this as some “JEWISH” conspiracy. It isn’t. These are the workings of the extreme right wing of Israeli politics. They have their own Bush’s and Cheney’s there too.

As noted, there is more work posted on link.
So why would people supposedly from Iran be posting in English almost exclusively?
Why would "iranriggedelect" begin crying foul before the results were even in- and in English?

This type of thing is not new news. There have been other incidences of Zionists (and CIA/Mossad, incidentally) work such as this- creating fake accounts with a popular information source or social network, and then exploiting it to their own agenda.


This is one well sourced story of such, in regards to the attempted infiltration of Wikipedia
EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia

What blows my mind is how "news" orgs such as CNN and MSNBC and FOX are using Twitter posts as news! Unverified sources, unverified accounts, yet they are relying on this to help build support for a coup.

("support for a coup" = my own opinion. Almost play by play, the same thing that is happening now is very similar to what happened in the 1953 American/British coup of democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh- who was then replaced with the brutal American-backed Shah.
But I really feel we are watching yet another cleverly orchestrated coup unfold. It makes me sick, turns my stomach. If more people knew the truth, the whole world would be up in arms.)

Another thing that is bothersome here- there really is good reason to want a change in government over there. Although I do not think he the evil demon that much of the West does, Ahmadinejad is a part of a very conservative theocratic government, old school, holding onto the past.
I feel for the people who are upset that Moussavi wasn't elected- although Moussavi himself is an asshole- how soon people forget?

But one reason there is anger is that people were led to believe that Mousavi would win and then they found out how wrong that was, so they are shocked.
I think it is not up to us here in the West to get involved, it is not up to us to be the judge and jury and most of all, NOT to engage in actions that fuel violence. If we get involved, and we will I am sure, What will happen will be another repeat of the coup in 1953- and it will again be the Iranian people who suffer the consequences.

It really, really bothers me that this is being fueled in large part by lies and misrepresentations. What this is for- is to build up Western support for the removal of a democratically elected leader. In spite of the younger folks wanting a well deserved change, the fact is they were outvoted. Ahmadinejad was re-elected because he has a large base of support due to his refusal to bow down to interference by the West...
We need to stay out of their business and allow them to work through it. In spite of what we are told, there is open talk and dialog in Iran, the women are youth movements are not as oppressed as our media would lead us to believe, and if we let them grow as they will naturally, change will come.
It is outside interference that is doing the most harm.

[BLOODLINES]

Bravo!

It's happening all over again and who's behind it?

What aggravates me is John. and Jane. Q. Public, do not see it for what it really is.

Glad to see your on it NK.

What's friggin' sad is it won't go any further than this, a few thousand on forum's see it and really give a rat's ass because it's not their problem.

But boy, (Them there riot's sure do make fer sum excitin' new's)

[Freaked out]

Originally Posted by Nu Kua

So why would people supposedly from Iran be posting in English almost exclusively? Why would "iranriggedelect" begin crying foul before the results were even in- and in English?

This type of thing is not new news. There have been other incidences of Zionists (and CIA/Mossad, incidentally) work such as this- creating fake accounts with a popular information source or social network, and then exploiting it to their own agenda.


This is one well sourced story of such, in regards to the attempted infiltration of Wikipedia
EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia

What blows my mind is how "news" orgs such as CNN and MSNBC and FOX are using Twitter posts as news! Unverified sources, unverified accounts, yet they are relying on this to help build support for a coup.

("support for a coup" = my own opinion. Almost play by play, the same thing that is happening now is very similar to what happened in the 1953 American/British coup of democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh- who was then replaced with the brutal American-backed Shah.
But I really feel we are watching yet another cleverly orchestrated coup unfold. It makes me sick, turns my stomach. If more people knew the truth, the whole world would be up in arms.)

Another thing that is bothersome here- there really is good reason to want a change in government over there. Although I do not think he the evil demon that much of the West does, Ahmadinejad is a part of a very conservative theocratic government, old school, holding onto the past.
I feel for the people who are upset that Moussavi wasn't elected- although Moussavi himself is an asshole- how soon people forget?

But one reason there is anger is that people were led to believe that Mousavi would win and then they found out how wrong that was, so they are shocked.
I think it is not up to us here in the West to get involved, it is not up to us to be the judge and jury and most of all, NOT to engage in actions that fuel violence. If we get involved, and we will I am sure, What will happen will be another repeat of the coup in 1953- and it will again be the Iranian people who suffer the consequences.

It really, really bothers me that this is being fueled in large part by lies and misrepresentations. What this is for- is to build up Western support for the removal of a democratically elected leader. In spite of the younger folks wanting a well deserved change, the fact is they were outvoted. Ahmadinejad was re-elected because he has a large base of support due to his refusal to bow down to interference by the West...
We need to stay out of their business and allow them to work through it. In spite of what we are told, there is open talk and dialog in Iran, the women are youth movements are not as oppressed as our media would lead us to believe, and if we let them grow as they will naturally, change will come.
It is outside interference that is doing the most harm.

While I agree with much of what you're saying and while I can believe a handful of people, armed with their own agendas, started a "twitter campaign" - I think the real problem here is that the election was, in fact, fraudulent.

Here is a fairly persuasive article on the point which discusses obvious irregularities between results of past elections and the recent election. Also significant, is that the Ayatollah, who normally waits three days before pronouncing a winner, prounced Ahmadinejad the winner immediately - without the normal three day wait.

An excerpt from the article:

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory. The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose

One has to remember that Iran does not have a true democracy and the elected president has only marginal powers and is best described as a figurehead. The Supreme Ruler has the real power. It is a clerical theocracy, with a veneer of democracy. Ahmadinejad, despite his antics, is not a threat to the status quo - his opponent, Mousavi, however does represent a threat (of what degree, seems debatable) to the status quo. He's no saint of course, but his platform did include noteworthy changes to Iran's constitution.

I just think it is difficult, at this stage, to claim that the CIA had any involvement here. Technically, Mousavi could prove to be the more skilled diplomat, true, but technically, he would be no better for US business interests. He has had ideological differences with the Ayatollah before on economic issues. What I'm trying to say, is that I don't see any benefit to the US by intervening here.

On the other hand, the person, with the most to gain from keeping Ahmadinejad in power is, of course, the Ayatollah himself. This theocratic ruling body really needs to go.

[lycanox]

Actually it is unlikely the ayatollah is behind this. As the Iranian election system is smart enough to weed out any unwanted parties. So for him it would not matter who wins.

But we have to remember that, aside from some spies and a few reliable but biased twitter accounts we have no idea what is going on there. As the government has cut of every information source.
I think this whole deal is being blown way out of proportions and that aside from some terror groups and wannabe Che Chevaras. There is no treat of an revolution or something like that.

[James Random]

It is most likely that the Israeli tweeters posted in english because the bulk of twitter users are still American And English. Europeans closer to the west than Iran generally speak english as a second language anyway.

[Freaked out]

Originally Posted by lycanox

Actually it is unlikely the ayatollah is behind this. As the Iranian election system is smart enough to weed out any unwanted parties. So for him it would not matter who wins.

Good point - but I don't think he expected the outcome necessarily. I think they figured Ahmadinejad would win by a comfortable margin. The preliminary counts (which had Mousavi in the lead) certainly don't match up with the virtual landslide with which Ahmadinejad ostensibly won. The article I furnished suggested, that it was a sloppy job to re-rig the final results.

The Iranian election process can be tampered with, fairly easily, by sending out a call to the ballot stations - there's no independent (ie UN oversight) of the process.

Considering that all television media is controlled by the Ayatollahs - considering that the Guardian Council itself is a body comprised largely of appointees by the Supreme Ruler or nominated by other's he has appointed positions to, it seems to me that any "investigation" will just be an exercise in whitewash and you're right, we might never really know.

[olddragon]

Why were these tweets in English?

Because, unlike America, English is taught in Iranian schools.

[ryangti]

Very possible is this a desperate ploy if true to eventually attacking Iran and obviously a way to find a reason?

Whether its North korea and Iran here is something that also may make you think.
IRAN today denied that it was seeking a nuclear weapon as an "insurance policy", as suggested by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei.
Now if you have read about North korea who suggested they could supply Iran with nukes if they wanted to,anyway they are sly buddies really.

You know fight America fight Israel but have the backing of North korea you could say,anyway if this a desperate ploy in which to start a war then god help us.
Its like saying 9/11 was actually done within as Iraq became a threat,as we now know of course this was untrue but did stop us bomabarding that country.

Now of course we feel and start to see the consequences unfold,now we know Iran threatened Israel and Israel attacked syria im sure both syria and iran are allies.
Hey why not provoke a situation to get what you want.
If im on the wrong track then tell us but this is how i see it.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574...15-401,00.html

[Perfectionist]

Israel/America/Britain/etc doing it's best to de-stabilise the Middle-East is pretty much a given ...... an ongoing process with no end in sight ...... howveer, they do have methods a little more sophisticated than frikkin Twitter !!

[medicvet]

I, too, am inclined to believe in a "vast Zionist conspiracy" of a sort, based on the history of such events as well as current activities. Yet to be honest, at this point, the information provided in the article doesn't prove any of that, only points to "signs" of such, and only proves that something is very fishy and smelly in regards to how "the word" was spread via Twitter.

Really??? And up until now no one at all has said how false that is? What, everyone else here thinks it is okay to blame the jooooooooooooooooooos????

I can't even begin to express how disappointed I am.

[olddragon]

Originally Posted by medicvet

Really??? And up until now no one at all has said how false that is? What, everyone else here thinks it is okay to blame the jooooooooooooooooooos????

I can't even begin to express how disappointed I am.

What's got in to you Medicvet?

Iran is a nation of Islamic law, so of course, any of their problems,
must have been caused by Israel.

I'll be willing to bet that the vids of the demonstrations, are really Jews pretending to be unhappy Iranians.

After all, we know that Jews in Israel are the

[lycanox]

Originally Posted by medicvet

Really??? And up until now no one at all has said how false that is? What, everyone else here thinks it is okay to blame the jooooooooooooooooooos????

I can't even begin to express how disappointed I am.

Criticism at Israel is not the same as antisemitism.

[medicvet]

Yah, but a 'zionist conspiracy' c'mon now! Haven't you guys been watching the demonstrations that do manage to get out even though tptb in Iran are trying to shut them down? There are hundreds of thousands of people PEACEFULLY demonstrating..that isn't a zionist conspiracy, it's a revolution. The Iranian people are young and educated and women especially are protesting the restrictions placed upon them.

Veterans of the Iran/Iraq war that were part of youth waves that would run at the enemy and overwhelm them with sheer numbers oftentimes not armed at all back during the war, and they are risking their lives by saying that ahmamaddinnerjacket doesn't speak for them at all. But if you want to think it's just a zionist conspiracy, here ya go:

[lycanox]

They are just demonstrations. Either the government ignores them and wait until everybody get tired of it. Or the government decides to end it by force.

I don't really see anything yet that can be classed as an revolution.

[medicvet]

It reminds me of Tieneman (sp?) square, the Prague spring, the fall of the Berlin wall..

This is a sea change of major proportions.

[lycanox]

You forget however that the Ayatollah can diffuse the entire situation by simply declaring Mousavi the winner.

And it is not like things are going to be any better under Mousavi.