Iran Executed the Nuclear Scientist, Mentioned in Hillary’s Emails

Iran has executed a nuclear scientist it convicted of divulging state secrets to the U.S., its judiciary said Sunday.

Shahram Amiri had earlier been sentenced to death by a lower court, judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehi told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The sentence was “confirmed and carried out,” he said.

He was allegedly paid $5 million dollars for his information helping the United States.

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EXCLUSIVE: Iran Nuclear Scientist Defects to U.S. In CIA ‘Intelligence Coup’

2010/ABCNews: An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, has defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States, according to people briefed on the operation by intelligence officials.

The officials were said to have termed the defection of the scientist, Shahram Amiri, “an intelligence coup” in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran’s nuclear program.

A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment. In its declassified annual report to Congress, the CIA said, “Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons though we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons.”

Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, went missing last June three days after arriving in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage, according to the Iranian government. He worked at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is closely connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, according to the Associated Press. More here.

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Upon the orders of the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the regime’s executioners sent nuclear expert Shahram Amiri to the gallows after seven years of imprisonment. Shahram Amiri’s execution, whose news was published by his family, was carried out despite the fact that the mullahs’ judiciary had sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment and five years of exile on the charge of “relationships with hostile governments”. More here.

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Cotton: Clinton discussed executed Iranian scientist on email

WashingtonExaminer: Hillary Clinton recklessly discussed, in emails hosted on her private server, an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed by Iran for treason, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Sunday.

“I’m not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government, but in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server, there were conversations among her senior advisors about this gentleman,” he said on “Face the Nation.” Cotton was speaking about Shahram Amiri, who gave information to the U.S. about Iran’s nuclear program.

The senator said this lapse proves she is not capable of keeping the country safe.

“That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decision was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server. And I think her judgment is not suited to keep this country safe,” he said.

The revelation could cause further political damage to Clinton, who was already on the defensive Sunday after commenting oddly last week that she had “short-circuited” in a statement related to her honesty about the email scandal.

Republican nominee Donald Trump seized on the statement to question her mental stability.

Iran confirmed on Sunday that Amiri had been hanged for treason. He was convicted of spying charges in a death sentence case that was upheld on appeal, according to the Associated Press.

“This person who had access to the country’s secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan” a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said. “He provided the enemy with vital and secret information of the country.”

His body was returned to his mother with rope marks around the neck.

It would appear possible that discussion on an unclassified — and quite possibly hacked — email system about a person who was hanged as a spy will have a chilling effect on others who might want to engage in espionage for the United States.

Amiri disappeared while on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009, but he then resurfaced a year later in the U.S., where he visited the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy and demanded to be sent home to Iran. While Amiri told reporters that he was held against his will by both the Saudis and the Americans, U.S. officials said he was receiving millions of dollars for information he provided about Iran’s nuclear program.

The scientist shows up in Clinton’s emails back in 2010, just nine days before he returned to Iran.

“We have a diplomatic, ‘psychological’ issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out,” the email by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read, according to the Associated Press. “Our person won’t be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave so be it.”

Cotton Sunday also accused the Obama administration of “working like a gun cartel” by sending $400 million to Iran in what many regard as ransom for hostages.

Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine described the payment as “appropriate.”

There is Video of the $400 Million to Iran

But Trump was telling a fib when he said he saw it…he has not had any intelligence briefings yet and likely will not until the end of August. Meanwhile, the Iranians are going at the United States with all propaganda they can muster. John Kerry and the White House not only look like fools, they ARE fools.

Another question for those investigative journalist: Were the 7 Iranian spies that also included in this transaction on that same plane as the money?

Other facts:

The United States is buying 32 metric tons of Iranian heavy water, a key component for one kind of nuclear reactor, The Associated Press reported.

The purpose of the transaction is to help Iran meet the terms of last year’s nuclear deal under which it agreed to curb its atomic program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief, according to the news agency.

The State and Energy departments said a sales agreement would be signed Friday in Vienna by officials from the six countries that negotiated the nuclear deal.

The agreement calls for the Energy Department’s Isotope Program to purchase the heavy water from a subsidiary of the UN atomic watchdog, for about $8.6 million, officials said. They added the heavy water will be stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and then resold on the commercial market for research purposes. More here.

Another nefarious fact:

In late May, Russian Envoy to International Organizations Vladimir Voronkov said that Russian nuclear agency Rosatom was considering the possibility of buying Iranian heavy water.

“Steps are to be finalized for sale of 40 tons of heavy-water reactor to Russia and the deal will be signed in the very near future,” Salehi said, as quoted by the IRNA news agency.

According to Salehi, deputy head of the organization Behrouz Kamalvandi may in the near future visit Moscow to discuss concluding the issue with the Russian side. There is also an option that a Russian delegation will arrive in Iran, he said.

According to the nuclear deal agreed last year, Iran must store no more than 130 tons of heavy water during the first year after signing the agreement. More here.

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The footage, which could not be independently verified, shows images of large stacks of hard currency and features claims that the Obama administration sent this money over as part of an effort to free several U.S. hostages. The White House vehemently denied these claims this week following new reports about the cash exchange.

BBC Persian reporter Hadi Nili posted the footage on Twitter, describing it as showing the “pallets of cash” and quoting officials as saying “this was just part of the ‘expensive price’ to release Americans.” More here from FreeBeacon.

Could Trump have been right? Propaganda film suggests Iran DID videotape cash-drop plane and photograph shipment of cash during January prisoner swap

  • February documentary that aired on Iranian state-run TV shows nighttime flight, pallet of cash matching prisoner-swap scenario reported this week
  • Donald Trump claimed three times this week that he had seen similar footage and that Iran had filmed the cash transfer to embarrass America
  • He walked back that claim Friday morning, saying he had only seen archival footage of a different plane delivering hostages safely to Geneva
  • He may have been right without knowing it: Propaganda broadcast shows the images and boasts the deal was great for Iran but terrible for the U.S.

DailyMail: Iranian state-run media in Tehran did indeed videotape the arrival of a January 17 flight carrying $400 million in cash from the United States – and the money itself – judging from a documentary that aired the following month in the Islamic republic.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been in a firestorm of controversy since first claiming on Wednesday to have seen ‘secret’ footage of money being offloaded from an aircraft.

He admitted Friday morning on Twitter what his campaign had said more than a day earlier, that he had seen ordinary archival footage of a different plane, carrying American hostages freed from Iran arriving in Geneva Switzerland after the money changed hands.

But it turns out he may have been right without knowing it.

Iranian state television broadcast this image of a shipping pallet stacked with cash in February as part of a propaganda film framing a January U.S. prisoner swap as a victory for Tehran
Iranian state television broadcast this image of a shipping pallet stacked with cash in February as part of a propaganda film framing a January U.S. prisoner swap as a victory for Tehran
The documentary described this plane as arriving in the dead of night with the money, exactly the scenario that Donald Trump was criticized for describing three times this week
The documentary described this plane as arriving in the dead of night with the money, exactly the scenario that Donald Trump was criticized for describing three times this week

The Iranian video was aired February 15 on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting television network, as part of a documentary called ‘Rules of the Game.’

A narrator, speaking in Persian, describes a money-for-hostages transaction over video clips of a plane on an airport tarmac in the dead of night and a photo of a giant shipping pallet stacked with what appear to be banknotes.

The federal government shipped what many are calling a ransom payment in Euros and other non-U.S. currencies.

The copy of the documentary footage DailyMail.com obtained is not of high enough quality to determine which nation’s banknotes are depicted.

None of the footage is stamped with a date or time, making it impossible to know when it was shot.

And the broadcaster blurred out one portion of the screen, covering up something resting on top of the mountain of money.

But the documentary begins with a narration saying: ‘In the early morning hours of January 17, 2016 at Mehrabad Airport, $400 million in cash was transported to Iran on an airplane.’

The film describes the Obama administration’s prisoner swap and Iran’s cash windfall from Tehran’s point of view as ‘a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States,’ according to two English-language translations DailyMail.com obtained.

 

Trump fell on his sword Friday on Twitter, conceding that he was describing a different plan when he said there was footage of the cash drop – an assertion that turned out to be right

Trump fell on his sword Friday on Twitter, conceding that he was describing a different plan when he said there was footage of the cash drop – an assertion that turned out to be right

It outlines what Iran’s mullahs promoted at the time as a one-sided transaction loaded with perks for Tehran.

‘The Islamic republic made an expensive offer to the equation: the release of seven Iranian prisoners in the United States, $1.7 billion, and the lifting of sanctions against 16 Iranians who were prosecuted by the U.S. legal system with the unjust excuse of sanctions violations,’ the narrator intones.

‘But this was not all the Iranians’ demands. Lifting sanctions against Sepah Bank was added to Iran’s list. All of this, in return for the release of only four American citizens: a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States.’

Among the four freed Americans were Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, pastor Saeed Abedini and U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House was quick to insist on Thursday that the Obama administration had not paid for their release.

‘Let me be clear: The United States does not pay ransom, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, questioning the motives of Republican who were ‘falsely accusing us of paying a ransom.

The propaganda film was shown a month after the January prisoner release in Iran but was unknown in the West until Friday. It described the swap as 'a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States'

The propaganda film was shown a month after the January prisoner release in Iran but was unknown in the West until Friday. It described the swap as ‘a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States’

Read more here from the DailyMail.

 

$400M is but One Payment to Iran, from a 1996 Legal Case

It is not ransom, it is not ransom…okay…well let’s go further shall we?

Justice Department Officials Raised Objections on U.S. Cash Payment to Iran

Some officials worried about message being sent, but were overruled, WSJ

Then, Obama violated his own Executive Order as noted here and dated February 5, 2012.

Why did we convert to cash in various currencies and not just wire the money into designated Iranian banks? Well the excuse is sanctions. And Iran demanded cash such that later purchases or transactions could not be monitored, so John Kerry was cool with that. The result was smuggling $400 million on pallets on an unmarked cargo plane that landed in the middle of the night. Smuggling?

What is bulk cash smuggling?

Bulk Cash Smuggling is a reporting offense under the Bank Secrecy Act, and is part of the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code stipulates:

Whoever, with the intent to evade a currency reporting requirement, knowingly conceals more than $10,000 in currency or other monetary instruments on the person of such individual or in any conveyance, article of luggage, merchandise, or other container, and transports or transfers or attempts to transport or transfer such currency or monetary instruments from a place within the United States to a place outside of the United States, or from a place outside the United States to a place within the United States, shall be guilty of a currency smuggling offense.

What authorities govern bulk cash smuggling offenses?

Title 31 U.S.C. § 5332 (Bulk Cash Smuggling) makes it a crime to smuggle or attempt to smuggle more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments into or out of the United States, with the specific intent to evade the U.S. currency reporting requirements codified in Title 31 U.S.C. §§ 5316 and 5317.

ICE HSI relies on other financial authorities granted under Title 31 U.S.C. (Money and Finance), specifically those related to violations of reporting requirements and structuring financial transactions, as well as criminal authorities, such as Title 18 U.S.C. § 1960 (Unlicensed Money Transporter/Transmitter), Title 18 U.S.C. § 1952 (Interstate and Foreign Travel or Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises) and Title 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (Money Laundering). These authorities allow ICE HSI to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks that move bulk cash, wherever they may operate.

What are monetary instruments?

Monetary instruments are financial instruments that can be used similarly to cash. Specifically, monetary instruments are defined on the second or reverse side of the FinCEN Form 105:

  1. Coin or currency of the United States or of any other country.
  2. Traveler’s checks in any form.
  3. Negotiable instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) in bearer form, endorsed without restriction, made out to a fictitious payee, or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.
  4. Incomplete instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) that are signed but on which the name of the payee has been omitted.
  5. Securities or stock in bearer form or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.

Monetary instruments do not include the following:

  • Checks or money orders made payable to the order of a named person which have not been endorsed or which bear restrictive endorsements.
  • Warehouse receipts
  • Bills of lading.   More here.

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Remember the plane was delayed for reasons no one was willing to declare but then John Kerry blamed it on a glitch with the passenger list.

There had been expectations that they would leave on Saturday, while the final round of talks on sanctions were taking place. But the Swiss plane carrying Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho and Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Michigan as well as some of their family members did not leave until Sunday morning.

It had been reported when the plane took off that Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, about whom little is known, was on board. But a senior U.S. official later said he was not traveling with the other released prisoners. More here.

It is also important to remember as Iran released 4 prisoners, the United States released 7. It is also important to remember that Obama had to issue a pardon for those 7 to be released.

Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, named the Iranians set for release as Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afghahi, Arash Ghahraman, Tooraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Saboonchi. Mechanic’s lawyer told Reuters that Mechanic, Faridi and Afghahi had been pardoned, but Mechanic and Faridi had not yet been freed from custody as their release was contingent on the four American prisoners leaving Iran. The U.S. government has yet to confirm the identities of the Iranians to be freed. All seven have the option of staying in the U.S. rather than returning to Iran. The U.S. State Department also dropped an international request to detain 14 Iranians on trade violations on Saturday, saying the extradition requests were unlikely to be successful. More here.

Okay, so with all of that, what about the rest of the money allegedly owed to Iran?

Well it seems someone needs to look at the lawsuit in clear detail as it was not filed until 1996. The U.S. response to the lawsuit is here in .pdf.

On August 12, 1996, the Islamic Republic of Iran filed aStatement of Claim (Doc . 1) in a new interpretive dispute againstthe United States, Case No . A/30, alleging that the United Stateshas violated its commitments under the Algiers Accords byinterfering in Iran’s internal affairs and implementing economicsanctions against Iran.

The Government of Iran, which has a long record of using terrorism and lethal force as an instrument of state policy, isseeking a ruling from the Tribunal that the United States hasviolated the Algiers Accords by intervening in Iran’s internalaffairs and enacting economic sanctions against it . Iran assertsthat the United States has violated two obligations under theAlgiers Accords : the pledge in Paragraph 1 of the GeneralDeclaration that it is and will be the policy of the UnitedStates not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs, and therequirement in Paragraph 10 of the General Declaration to revokeall trade sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s seizing the

U.S . Embassy and taking 52 American hostages on November 4, 1979.

To hear the State Department spokesperson, Admiral Kirby (ret), John Kerry and the White House spokesperson Josh Earnest tell it, the U.S. was about to be rendered a decision by The Hague that we lost the case. Really when it began over kidnapping, hostages and terrorism? C’mon….

$400 Million for Iran is to Prop up Their Economy, ah Yeah, Sure

Press Statement John Kerry Secretary of State Washington, DC January 17, 2016

 


The United States and Iran today have settled a long outstanding claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague.

This specific claim was in the amount of a $400 million Trust Fund used by Iran to purchase military equipment from the United States prior to the break in diplomatic ties. In 1981, with the reaching of the Algiers Accords and the creation of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, Iran filed a claim for these funds, tying them up in litigation at the Tribunal.

This is the latest of a series of important settlements reached over the past 35 years at the Hague Tribunal. In constructive bilateral discussions, we arrived at a fair settlement to this claim, which due to litigation risk, remains in the best interests of the United States.

Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest. Iran’s recovery was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest and therefore Iran is unable to pursue a bigger Tribunal award against us, preventing U.S. taxpayers from being obligated to a larger amount of money.

All of the approximately 4,700 private U.S. claims filed against the Government of Iran at the Tribunal were resolved during the first 20 years of the Tribunal, resulting in payments of more than $2.5 billion in awards to U.S. nationals and companies through that process.

There are still outstanding Tribunal claims, mostly by Iran against the U.S. We will continue efforts to address these claims appropriately.

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Congress Probes White House-Linked Campaign to Deceive Media on Iran Nuclear Deal

Funder of pro-Iran ‘echo chamber’ met with White House nearly 30 times

FreeBeacon: A member of the House Intelligence Committee has launched a probe into whether a leading architect of the campaign to sell the Iran nuclear agreement last summer coordinated with the White House to mislead the media and the American public, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The inquiry is part of a larger effort by lawmakers to discern the origins of a shadow campaign that top White House officials admitted to running in order to enlist journalists and experts to boost support for the agreement.

The latest probe, launched by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Ill.), centers on Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a left-leaning foundation that quietly bankrolled a core part of the White House’s campaign to sell the nuclear agreement.

Cirincione visited the White House almost 30 times in the past few years during the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, prompting Pompeo to launch a wide-ranging probe into Ploughshares’ efforts to slant reporting on the Iran deal, according to a copy of that inquiry obtained by the Free Beacon.

Ploughshares has been engulfed in controversy since the Free Beacon and other media outlets exposed its efforts to fund media organizations that provided favorable coverage of the Iran deal, including National Public Radio. The organization also held strategy sessions with White House officials to force support for the deal in Congress.

New information from the Pompeo inquiry shows that Cirincione downplayed his ties to the White House’s pro-Iran efforts to create the impression that he was a neutral foreign policy observer. Cirincione did several interviews at NPR and other outlets boosting the nuclear deal, and billed himself as a top source for reporters seeking information about the administration’s diplomacy.

“After the Obama administration cited your organization, the Ploughshares Fund, as a key surrogate in its selling of the Iran nuclear deal, the attention of the media and the American public turned to your group,” Pompeo wrote in a Wednesday letter to Cirincione. “Ploughshares’ contributions, totaling $700,000 to National Public Radio (NPR) over the past several years, raised concerns of bias and journalistic ethics.”

“Specifically, your behavior as the leader of this organization during the Iran deal debate has left many with questions,” wrote Pompeo, who has been investigating these ties since the Free Beacon disclosed that NPR had cancelled an interview with the lawmaker, a deal critic, after receiving funds from Ploughshares.

Cirincione failed to disclose his organization’s close financial ties to the media outlet during multiple appearances on NPR, according to Pompeo.

“After news broke of Ploughshares’ significant financial contributions to NPR, it was also discovered that no disclosure of these gifts were made, either by you or by NPR, when you appeared on NPR on March 23, 2015,” the letter states. “This disclosure ‘breakdown’ prompted the NPR ombudsman to conduct a review of NPR’s processes.”

That internal review found that NPR violated journalistic ethics during its interviews with Cirincione.

“What is disturbing to outside observers is that NPR is ‘looking into why the Cirincione interview in particular did not raise any red flags’ at the time, though it obviously had to be corrected,” Pompeo writes.

“Your enthusiastic defense of Ploughshares’ conduct after these revelations did not acknowledge or apologize for any mistakes,” the lawmaker adds. “I do not yet know if your organization had similar problems with other news outlets. I am concerned that this NPR incident it is part of a broader pattern of deceit.”

Congressional insiders who spoke to the Free Beacon about the latest probe said Cirincionce has not come clean about why he failed to publicly disclose his close ties to the White House’s pro-Iran deal spin machine.

“There’s a real disconnect between what Ploughshares’ president is saying and what he’s doing,” said one senior congressional aide familiar with the inquiry. “The Associated Press’s and NPR’s accusations against him and his group are serious—yet he continues using Obama administration talking points and refuses to recognize the clear errors in how he behaved.”

“You cannot give hundreds of thousands of dollars to public radio and then go on public radio many times without disclosing those contributions,” the source added. “And he is just one member of the organized ‘echo chamber’ promoting Obama’s agenda—imagine how many more like him there are.”

Pompeo seeks to obtain further information about Ploughshares’ efforts to boost the deal, including whether it obfuscated its financial ties to NPR and other organizations.

The probe also asks about potential coordination between Cirincione and the White House.

“Did the White House contact you about your NPR interviews and request you use any material or talking points?” Pompeo writes. “You have visited the White House almost 30 times in the last few years—years that were very critical for debate on the Iran deal.”

“Your official visit to the White House on March 15, 2015 is questionably close to your March 23, 2013 appearance on NPR to discuss the Iran nuclear deal. Similarly, your official White House visit on April 6, 2010 was right before your April 12, 2010 NPR appearance,” the inquiry states.

Cirincione has denied on multiple occasions that the White House had created a pro-Iran deal operation, despite the disclosure of such an operation by top officials.

He also has taken aim at critics of the Iran deal by alleging that they are part of a larger conspiracy to promote war with Iran. This has includedcriticism of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.), who Cirincione has referred to as “neocons.”

“Deeply disappointed [Senator Cardin] caved to the neocon, pro-war camp,” Cirincione tweeted in 2015 after Cardin expressed opposition to the deal. “Weak statement excusing his vote against the historic Iran Accord.”

Most recently, Cirincione appeared in a Ploughshares video about the deal titled, “How we won.”

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What is Iran saying?

(AFP). Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday the United States had wasted the opportunity presented by the nuclear accord and prevented the two countries from working more closely on regional issues.

“As the supreme guide said, the nuclear agreement was a test,” Rouhani said in a televised address.

“If the United States had implemented the nuclear agreement with good faith and precision, and had reduced the obstacles and delays that we see today, we could have had more trust and engaged in negotiations on other subjects, which could have been in the interests of the region, the United States and us,” added the president, a moderate who pushed hard for the deal sealed in July 2015.

The agreement, which came into force in January, saw Iran accept curbs to its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions by world powers.

While observers say Iran has met its commitments, Tehran accuses Washington of continuing to block the Islamic republic from the international banking system, limiting its ability to benefit from the end of sanctions.

“Sadly, (the United States) did not successfully pass the test and has not precisely respected its commitments,” said Rouhani.

Rouhani said the agreement had already led to a significant rise in oil exports, but “in other sectors, things have moved slowly” due to the ongoing concerns of international banks, who fear they are still liable for prosecution by the US Treasury if they do business with Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Monday that negotiations with the West were like a “lethal poison”.

“Six months on (from the nuclear deal), do we see any effect on people’s lives?” he asked.

The Americans “ask to negotiate on regional questions, but the experience of the nuclear negotiations proves that this would be a lethal poison and that we can’t trust them on any subject”, he said.

Fake URL’s and Shortening During Arab Spring/Iran

In 2014, it was reported but not widely so.

Edward Snowden leaked a top-secret GCHQ document which details the operations and the techniques used by JTRIG unit for propaganda and internet deception.

SecurityAffairs: The JTRIG unit of the British GCHQ intelligence agency has designed a collection of applications that were used to manipulate for internet deception and surveillance, including the modification of the results of the online polls. The hacking tools have the capability to disseminate fake information, for example artificially increasing the counter of visit for specific web sites, and could be also used to censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The set of application remembers me the NSA catalog published in December when the Germany’s Der Spiegel has revealed another disturbing article on the NSAsurveillance, the document leaked by tge media agency was an internal NSA catalog that offers spies backdoors into a wide range of equipment from major vendors.

The existence of the tools was revealed by the last collection of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the applications were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) and are considered one of the most advanced system for propaganda and internet deception. JTRIG is the secret unit mentioned for the first time in a collection of documents leaked by Snowden which describe the Rolling Thunder operation, the group ran DoS attack against chatrooms used by hacktivists. More here.

It is being reported again and it may be just good tradecraft by British intelligence.

British Spies Used a URL Shortener to Honeypot Arab Spring Dissidents

Motherboard: A shadowy unit of the British intelligence agency GCHQ tried to influence online activists during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests and the 2011 democratic uprisings largely known as the Arab Spring, as new evidence gathered from documents leaked by Edward Snowden shows.

The GCHQ’s special unit, known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, was first revealed in 2014, when leaked top secret documents showed it tried to infiltrate and manipulate—using “dirty trick” tactics such as honeypots—online communities including those of Anonymous hacktivists, among others.

The group’s tactics against hacktivists have been previously reported, but its influence campaign in the Middle East has never been reported before. I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past, and was aware of a key detail, a URL shortening service, that was actually redacted in Snowden documents published in 2014.

THE HONEYPOT

A now-defunct free URL shortening service—lurl.me—was set up by GCHQ that enabled social media signals intelligence. Lurl.me was used on Twitter and other social media platforms for the dissemination of pro-revolution messages in the Middle East.

These messages were intended to attract people who were protesting against their government in order to manipulate them and collect intelligence that would help the agency further its aims around the world. The URL shortener made it easy to track them.

I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past

The project is linked to the GCHQ unit called the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, whose mission is to use “dirty tricks” to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, according to leaked documents.

The URL shortening service was codenamed DEADPOOL and was one of JTRIG’s “shaping and honeypots” tools, according to a GCHQ document leaked in 2014.

Leaked GCHQ document listing shaping and honeypot tools used by JTRIG.

Earlier in the same year, NBC News released a leaked document showing that JTRIG attacked the hacktivist outfits Anonymous and LulzSec by launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on chatroom servers know as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks.

The group also identified individuals by using social engineering techniques to trick them into clicking links—a technique commonly used by cybercriminals.

One slide showed a covert agent sending a link—redacted by NBC in the slide—to an individual known as P0ke. According to the slide, this enabled the signals intelligence needed to deanonymize P0ke and discover his name, along with his Facebook and email accounts.

In the fall of 2010, I was an early member of the AnonOps IRC network attacked by JTRIG and used by a covert GCHQ agent to contact P0ke, and in 2011 I co-founded LulzSec with three others. The leaked document also shows that JTRIG was monitoring conversations between P0ke and the LulzSec ex-member Jake Davis, who went by the pseudonym Topiary.

Through multiple sources, I was able to confirm that the redacted deanonymizing link sent to P0ke by a covert agent was to the website lurl.me.

Leaked GCHQ slide from document titled “Hacktivism: Online Covert Action.”

COVERT DISRUPTION

Further investigation of the URL shortener using public data on the web exposed a revealing case study of JTRIG’s other operations that used the DEADPOOL tool, including covert operations in the Middle East.

The Internet Archive shows that the website was active as early as June 2009 and was last seen online on November 2013. A snapshot of the website shows it was a ”free URL shortening service” to ”help you get links to your friends and family fast.”

Snapshot of lurl.me.

Public online resources, search engines and social media websites such as Twitter, Blogspot and YouTube show it being used to fulfill GCHQ geopolitical objectives outlined in previously leaked documents. Almost all 69 Twitter pages that Google has indexed referencing lurl.me are anti-government tweets from supposed Iranian or Middle Eastern activists.

The vast majority are from Twitter accounts with an egg avatar only active for a few days and have a few tweets, but there were a couple from legitimate accounts that have been tweeting for years, who have retweeted or quoted the other accounts tweeting from the URL shortener.

According to agency documents published by The Intercept, one of the strategies for measuring the effectiveness of an operation is to check online to see if a message has been “understood accepted, remembered and changed behaviour”. This could for example involve tracking those who shared or clicked on the lurl.me links created by GCHQ.

The group also identified individuals by using social engineering techniques to trick them into clicking links

Another JTRIG document published by The Intercept titled “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations” can be used to understand the content associated with social media accounts that used the URL shortener.

JTRIG has an operations group for global targets, which then has a subteam for Iran, According to the document. It further states that “the Iran team currently aims to achieve counter-proliferation by: (1) discrediting the Iranian leadership and its nuclear programme; (2) delaying and disrupting access to materials used in the nuclear programme; (3) conducting online HUMINT; and (4) counter-censorship.”

The document goes on to detail the methods that JTRIG employs to achieve these goals, such as creating false personas, uploading YouTube videos, and starting Facebook groups to push specific information or agendas. Many of the techniques outlined are evident in social media accounts that aggressively use the URL shortener.

Page from leaked GCHQ document titled “Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations,” published at The Intercept.

AGENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN

There appear to be a small number of Twitter accounts that were only active during the month of June 2009, have very few followers, and repeatedly tweet the same content and links from lurl.me. One of the earliest and prolific accounts to tweet using the URL shortener is 2009iranfree.   Read more here from Motherboard.