More Executive Action Against Iran

Posted on June 24, 2019June 24, 2019 by Denise Simon

Due to timing, it is assumed rather than a U.S. military strike campaign against designated targets as a result of Iran shooting down a U.S. drone, Cyber Command initiated a cyber operation. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard maintains control of the rocket and missile systems and they have been disabled as the U.S. response. Iran has confirmed the cyber-attack but also says it failed. Iran expected a response by the United States and in advance shut down several radar sites.

The United States has been inside several cyber operations in Iran for a very long time and was ready for a go order. Meanwhile, The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that Iran has been advancing their own cyber operations against select US targets. It is unclear what those targets are.

President Trump spent the weekend at Camp David while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia and to Abu Dhabi while NSC John Bolton is in Israel. Bolton has on his calendar meetings with the Israeli national security and atomic energy officials as the introduction of the coming peace plan proposal dealing with the Palestinians will be introduced in Bahrain.

Photo: Alex Brandon AP

Trump has signed yet another addition to the sanctions architecture on Iran. There is talk of sanctions relief if Iran is willing to negotiate on key topics including escalating uranium enrichment. So far, Iran has said they will not meet with the United States and will shoot down other aircraft if they impede Iran airspace. The FAA has ordered all U.S. commercial aircraft to reroute outside of the existing Iran airspace buffer zone.

There are now heavy decisions for Europe to make in their economic trade with Iran versus that of the United States and remaining in the JCPOA, the Obama nuclear deal with Iran.

The Executive Order signed by President Trump goes right to the top of the regime yet does not yet include Mohammad Javad Zarif, the top Iran diplomat, however it is said that could come later in the week.

The new round of sanctions is all about existing monies controlled by the IRGC and the Iran Supreme leader and his associates. This includes access to revenues from oil exports and freezes the financial assets of key officials where the Iran Central Bank is listed.

***

Additional Executive Order sanctions details:

Today’s action targets commanders of the IRGC’s Navy, Aerospace, and Ground Forces, in addition to the commanders of the IRGC Navy’s (IRGCN) five naval districts. These include the naval district commanders who are responsible for the IRGCN’s activities off the coast of the southern provinces of Khuzestan, Bushehr, and Hormozgan, which lie adjacent to the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

OFAC is designating IRGCN Commander Ali Reza Tangsiri pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. As recently as February 2019, Tangsiri threatened that the Iranian regime’s forces would close the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway, if U.S. sanctions stopped Iran’s oil exports, and that the Iranian regime is prepared to target U.S. interests in the region. As the commander of the IRGCN, Tangsiri sits atop a structure—including those regional IRGCN commanders sanctioned today—that is responsible for the sabotage of vessels in the international waters.

Also designated today pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC is Amirali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, whose bureaucracy was responsible for downing the U.S. unmanned aircraft on June 20, 2019. Hajizadeh oversees Iran’s provocative ballistic missile program.

OFAC is also designating pursuant to E.O. 13224 Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC’s Ground Forces, for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. Under Pakpour’s command, the IRGC Ground Forces have deployed to fight in Syria in support of the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and the brutal Assad regime. In 2017, Pakpour said that the IRGC Ground Forces were in Syria to help the IRGC-QF.

OFAC is also designating the commanders of the IRGCN’s five naval districts pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC. The IRGC is responsible for the Regime’s destabilizing and provocative naval actions in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
IRGCN commanders of five naval districts designated today are:

IRGCN 1st Naval District Commander Abbas Gholamshahi
IRGCN 2nd Naval District Commander Ramezan Zirahi
IRGCN 3rd Naval District Commander Yadollah Badin
IRGCN 4th Naval District Commander Mansur Ravankar
IRGCN 5th Naval District Commander Ali Ozma’i

The IRGC was designated pursuant to E.O. 13224 by OFAC on October 13, 2017 and it was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the Secretary of State on April 15, 2019.

Sanctions Implications

As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of these individuals that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons must be blocked and reported to OFAC. OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of blocked or designated persons.

In addition, persons that engage in certain transactions with the persons designated today may themselves be exposed to designation. Furthermore, any foreign financial institution that knowingly facilitates a significant transaction or provides significant financial services for any of the individuals designated today could be subject to U.S. correspondent account or payable-through sanctions.

Hey Social Media, Here Comes Anti-Trust Scrutiny

Posted on June 3, 2019June 3, 2019 by Denise Simon

It has started with Google and this site has warned users of the Internet to stop using Google for years for various reasons. Now there are more. Oh, the Department of Justice may not stop with Google, so watch out Facebook, Yahoo News, Apple, Amazon and Twitter. Why?

Have you noticed how twisted news stories are? Have you noticed selective search engine results? Have you noticed search intrusions? Have you noticed censorship that may affect politics, truths or even voting habits?

How to Become a Social Media Marketing Pro for Less Than ...

Well, it begins with these social media/tech companies stopping competition, free speech and lying by omission. Reliance on these investigative activities begin with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This is a law where the Federal government opposes monopolies when it comes to contracts, trade and commerce. Add in the Federal Trade Commission Act and consider the timing as we move towards the 2020 General Election(s).

A short definition of the Antitrust Laws is found here.

In part from C-Net:

The move by the Justice Department comes as Google and other Silicon Valley giants face renewed antitrust scrutiny in the United States. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, has made it a key part of her platform to break up the big tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Amazon. Earlier this month, Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, also called for the breakup of the company he helped create.

In February 2018, President Donald Trump had signaled via his Federal Trade Commission leadership choice that he was open to investigating big tech companies.

Former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions last September reportedly met with state attorneys general to discuss whether Google and Facebook could be suppressing conservative views, after forming a task force to look into problems in the tech industry. However, once Sessions stepped down in November, the plan to follow up with the Justice Department was shelved.

The Journal report follows reports in March that Google could be facing an investigation over violations of antitrust or consumer protection regulations.

Google has also faced antitrust pressures from regulators in Europe. In March, the search giant was hit with a $1.7 billion fine from the European Commission for “abusive” online ad practices. The Commission said Google exploited its dominance by restricting its rivals from placing their search ads on third-party websites.

Last year, the EU’s executive arm fined Google a record $5 billion for unfair business practices around Android, its mobile operating system. The investigation focused on Google’s deals with phone manufacturers, requiring them to preload specific Google apps and services onto Android phones. After the EU announced the fine, Trump tweeted, “I told you so.”

***

Earlier Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Trade Commission will examine how Facebook’s practices affect digital competition. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that Amazon has come under heightened scrutiny by U.S. regulators. And on Friday, the Journal reported that the Justice Department is preparing a probe of Google, sending shares of parent company Alphabet down more than 7% Monday.

The possible Apple probe is linked to the Google probe, Reuters reported, and stems from meetings between the DOJ and the FTC.

The headlines together paint a daunting picture for Silicon Valley and the stock market’s most valuable companies. Big tech has long faced scrutiny from European regulators, but has so far shrugged off calls for government regulation in the U.S.

Apple has drawn increased criticism in recent months for what some — including streaming giant Spotify — see as anti-competitive behavior in the App Store. Apple owns and operates the online marketplace, collecting subscription fees from developers.

The so-called “Apple tax” accounts for a sizable percentage of Apple’s burgeoning services revenue segment, but draws the ire of developers who, in some cases, compete with Apple’s own apps in the store.

Spotify’s EU complaint against Apple, filed in March, is pending investigation by European authorities. More here.

Zarif/Iran Making War Noise, Pentagon Ready

Posted on April 29, 2019April 29, 2019 by Denise Simon

Iran of course is angry the United States declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp a terror organization. Well, it is. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is making the media rounds and he is throwing out words like war, military intervention and conflict. Reinforcing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s stance, Zarif warned: “If the United States takes the crazy measure of trying to prevent us from doing that, then it should be prepared for the consequences.” He did not give specifics.

Kerry, Zarif named candidates for 2016 Nobel Peace Prize

Zarif is even making noise about prisoner swaps as this shows some desperation including blocking the Strait of Hormuz from maritime oil tanker traffic. Stop the oil sanctions and we can pursue a prisoner swap..hummm. Zarif has also suggested possible cooperation with the United States to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan, a priority for both Tehran and Washington, but did not mention Syria.

US Central Command Chief General Kenneth McKenzie said on Saturday that the United States would deploy the necessary resources to counter any dangerous actions by Iran, Sky News Arabia reported.

“We’re gonna continue to reach out to our partners and friends in the region to ensure that we make common cause against the threat of Iran,” McKenzie, on an official visit to the Gulf region, was quoted as saying by Sky News Arabia.

“I believe we’ll have the resources necessary to deter Iran from taking actions that will be dangerous,” he said, according to a transcript released by the Abu Dhabi-based channel.

He said: “We will be able to respond effectively.”

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since the Trump administration last year withdrew from an international nuclear deal with Iran and began ratcheting up sanctions.

Earlier this month, the United States blacklisted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Washington on Monday demanded buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May or face sanctions, ending six months of waivers which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers, most of them in Asia, to continue importing limited volumes.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and some senior military commanders have threatened to disrupt oil shipments from Gulf countries if Washington tries to strangle Tehran oil exports.

McKenzie also said a reduction of US troops in Syria would be done cautiously.

“On the long term, we’re gonna reduce our forces in Syria, we recognize that, that’s the guidance in which we are operating.”

“That will be something that we will look at very carefully as we go forward,” the general said.

President Donald Trump had ordered the withdrawal of US troops Syria in December after he said they had defeated ISIS extremist group in Syria.

In February, a senior administration official said the United States will leave about 400 US troops split between two different regions of Syria.

McKenzie also said he was confident that the US is going to have “a long term presence in Iraq, focused on the counter-terror mission.”

Anyone Fretting over the Real Russian Hacking from the Mueller Report?

Posted on April 19, 2019April 19, 2019 by Denise Simon

Remember the timeline, it was the Comey FBI, the Brennan CIA, the Lynch Department of Justice and the Obama White House. So, Obama only expelled a pile of Russians and closed 3 dachas. Remember? When the dust settles just a little, President Trump has some work to do to clean up this hacking mess via Russia. Congress has some work to do also by defining some kind of hacking legislation.

The Mueller Report’s conclusions about Russian operations are unambiguous: the GRU’s Unit 26165 did the hacking, and the Internet Research Agency managed the influence campaign. The Report also concluded that the GRU’s Unit 74455 retailed the results of the doxing through its subsidiaries DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, and through a sympathetic WikiLeaks.

What is Unit 26165, Russia's elite military hacking centre?

Boris Zilberman on Twitter: "DOJ indictment against the ...

At one point, the Russians used servers located in the U.S. to carry out the massive data exfiltration effort, the report confirms.

Much of the information was previously learned from the indictment of Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, the Russian officer in charge of Unit 26165. Netyksho is believed to be still at large in Russia.

The operatives working for the Russian intelligence directorate, the GRU, sent dozens of targeted spearphishing emails in just five days to the work and personal accounts of Clinton Campaign employees and volunteers, as a way to break into the campaign’s computer systems.

The GRU hackers also gained access to the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, of which its contents were later published.

Using credentials they stole along the way, the hackers broke into the networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee days later. By stealing the login details of a system administrator who had “unrestricted access” to the network, the hackers broke into 29 computers in the ensuing weeks, and more than 30 computers on the DNC.

The operatives, known collectively as “Fancy Bear,” comprised several units tasked with specific operations. Mueller formally blamed Unit 26165, a division of the GRU specializing in targeting government and political organizations, for taking on the “primary responsibility for hacking the DCCC and DNC, as well as email accounts of individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,” said the Mueller report.

The hackers used Mimikatz, a hacking tool used once an intruder is already in a target network, to collect credentials, and two other kinds of malware: X-Agent for taking screenshots and logging keystrokes, and X-Tunnel used to exfiltrate massive amounts of data from the network to servers controlled by the GRU. Mueller’s report found that Unit 26165 used several “middle servers” to act as a buffer between the hacked networks and the GRU’s main operations. Those servers, Mueller said, were hosted in Arizona — likely as a way to obfuscate where the attackers were located but also to avoid suspicion or detection.

In all, some 70 gigabytes of data were exfiltrated from Clinton’s campaign servers and some 300 gigabytes of data were obtained from the DNC’s network.

Meanwhile, another GRU hacking unit, Unit 74455, which helped disseminate and publish hacked and stolen documents, pushed the stolen data out through two fictitious personas. DCLeaks was a website that hosted the hacked material, while Guccifer 2.0 was a hacker-like figure who had a social presence and would engage with reporters.

Under pressure from the U.S. government, the two GRU-backed personas were shut down by the social media companies. Later, tens of thousands of hacked files were funneled to and distributed by WikiLeaks .

Mueller’s report also found a cause-and-effect between Trump’s remarks in July 2016 and subsequent cyberattacks.

“I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” said then-candidate Trump at a press conference, referring to emails Clinton stored on a personal email server while she headed the State Department. Mueller’s report said “within approximately five hours” of those remarks, GRU officers began targeting for the first time Clinton’s personal office.

More than a dozen staffers were targeted by Unit 26165, including a senior aide. “It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public,” said Mueller.

Mueller said the Trump campaign made efforts to “find the deleted Clinton emails.” Trump is said to have privately asked would-be national security advisor Michael Flynn, since convicted following inquiries by the Special Counsel’s office, to reach out to associates to obtain the emails. One of those associates was Peter Smith, who died by suicide in May 2017, who claimed to be in contact with Russian hackers — claims which Mueller said were not true.

Does that implicate the Trump campaign in an illegal act? Likely not.

“Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy,” according to Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst. “The special counsel’s report did not find that any person associated with the Trump campaign illegally participated in the dissemination of the materials.”

Title lll vs. Cuba for Cuban Exiles, About Time

Posted on April 17, 2019April 17, 2019 by Denise Simon

There is a provision of the Cuban trade embargo that no U.S. president has ever used. President Trump has decided to be the first, according to White House officials. But it’s far from clear if it will do much to dislodge the island’s communist government.

It’s called Title III. It allows Americans – in this case mostly Cuban-Americans – to use U.S. federal courts to sue foreign companies that do business in Cuba on property taken from them by the Castro revolution.

Conservative Cuban exiles insist President Trump’s activation of Title III (part of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that tightened the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba) will have a chilling effect on foreign investment in Cuba – particularly for European and Canadian companies. That, they insist, will undermine the island’s economically failing regime.

“I do think it will be a turning point,” says Cuban-American attorney Marcell Felipe, who heads the Inspire America Foundation, a pro-democracy NGO in Miami. “For too long the Spanish and Canadian governments and their business interests have promoted respect for human rights everywhere in the world while they support a regime that imprisons anyone who dissents.”

But critics of Trump’s Title III move says it’s primarily another political bone tossed to his Cuban exile supporters – who he believes won Florida for him in the 2016 election.

Cuban-American attorney Pedro Freyre, who heads international practice at the Akerman law firm in Miami and represents firms that may face Title III lawsuits, warns it will be hard to collect money from those suits. Countries like Spain and Canada already have laws in place to block Cuban embargo-related litigation, and he points out that no U.S. president ever triggered the provision before for fear it could lead to retaliation against U.S. business interests around the world.

Freyre also believes it will probably take much more to topple Cuba’s repressive government.

“After watching the Cuban regime navigate 60 years of sanctions and having a rotten economy and a bad political system,” says Freyre, “it’s clear it’s particularly adept at survival. So I am skeptical that this will accomplish that.”

National Security Advisor John Bolton is expected to formally announce the Title III decision when he visits Miami on Wednesday. Sources close to the Trump administration tell WLRN the Title III decree may also include tightening U.S. government officials’ interaction with Cuban officials on the island – and possibly a dramatic scaling back of the amount of remittances Cuban-Americans can send to Cuba and the trips they can take there each year.

*** Image result for bolton in miami cuba

US National Security Adviser John Bolton is set to outline President Donald Trump’s plan to fully implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, a previously suspended section of the US trade embargo on the Communist-run country during a speech in Miami, the official said.

It is a move that is widely considered to be part of the administration’s efforts to ramp up pressure on Havana over its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — who Trump criticized as a “Cuban puppet” in February. Cuban officials have decried the increased sanctions on the communist-run island and offered to enter into negotiations to repay US companies for seized property.

During a speech in Miami last year, Bolton promised the crowd a tough US approach to the “troika of tyranny,” his term for Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, saying they represented “the perils of poisonous ideologies left unchecked.”