I wonder if the leaks from Cablegate, less than 0.5% of which have been published so far, will give us some more information on this.

As does Sibel Edmonds on the Turkish front... Any names like Dennis Hastert and his ilk and their crimes in them cables?

Can't wait for her part #2

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 9 2010 18:21 utc | 1

i've just spent about an hr trying to track down a wiki cable i read the other day, one i bookmarked which has now been wiped.

here's one w/the same date Embassy Tel Aviv although i could swear the one i bookmarked included another passage about messing w/their election.

The goal should be to encourage
Ahmadinejad's political rivals to remove him from power. Afterward, if the pressure could be maintained it might be possible to bring down the entire Iranian regime, but that would also entail identifying alternative leaders. The idea
was to use economic pressure to create a public sense of regime failure.

here's another from '[Source removed]:SUBJECT: IRAN POST-ELECTION'

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2010 18:35 utc | 2

Hiya Annie what was the date and title of the cable? If you know that I may be able to find it because paranoid Did has been downloading the complete set of cables most days. I haven't found any discrepancies but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 9 2010 19:41 utc | 3

i've just spent about an hr trying to track down a wiki cable i read the other day, one i bookmarked which has now been wiped.

Hi annie, nice to see you :-)

- I have observed that some cables published at WikiLeaks were retracted after a short while. The count of published cables on the wikileaks site actually went down several times before increasing again. I have no explanation for this just theories:

a. For legal "insurance" reasons WikiLeaks does, for now, not want to publish anything that has not been published by a MSM site. They therefore may take down cables that were mistakenly put up because some fact in it was published by the msm but the cables included other stuff not yet msm published.
b. Someone "advises" WikiLeaks to take down certain stuff because the Wikileaks "management" (CIA?) didn't like it.

For now I tend to think it is a.

The point to decided if it is a or b is when/if Wikileaks publishes all the cables. If it doesn't, I'll believe it is a fake operation. If it does and only holds back now to ride the wave against the "legal" attack on it, I'll likely accept it as genuine.

The general problem is that one, me included, mixes up "bias" that is introduced from the content/source/quoted source of/in the cables and msm publishers opinion on the cables with wikileaks intend. I tried to set that out in the posts below.

I'd prefer an uncensored total release of the whole stuff to sort through. But such might have generated little reaction except from few blogs and would, likely, not have demonstrated the hypocrisy of the U.S. government structure as good as this very limited but public release did.

Posted by: b | Dec 9 2010 19:58 utc | 4

b, your research supports what I found. I have a pdf file/poll that shows that Ahmadinjad's regime is popular and legitimate inside Iran. This is a vast contrast to what the US media tries to portray. The media never misses a beat to demonize Jad's regime. It is the same pattern that lead to the eventual assault on Iraq.

Posted by: ndahi | Dec 9 2010 20:33 utc | 5

hi debs and b! so great WONDERFUL to be here, i can't tell you. huge for me i've missed you so much.

the url i bookmarked was

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/04/07TELAVIV1114.html

it is the exact same date w/#'s as the first one i posted upthread (different server) only w/the original one segment was redacted (maybe more but the part that stood out for me).

i recall being a tad shocked because it stated clearly they would be exercising options wrt the elections as opposed to just:

Netanyahu advised Congress to expedite the legislative effort for divestment. If that did not work, we could reconsider other options.

the other options sited before were about the elections. i may have copy pasted that little section onto the thread i first linked to it over @ mondoweiss but it would require me checking out all their wiki threads and even then it might not have been in a wiki thread.

anyway...i definitely read it, in fact i came over here the same day and did a search..just a few days ago. those iranian election threads were rocky times here @ moa. more than anything the pushback here convinced me something was definitely screwy.

The general problem is that one, me included, mixes up "bias" that is introduced from the content/source/quoted source of/in the cables and msm publishers opinion on the cables with wikileaks intend. I tried to set that out in the posts below.

we're on the same page b. i can't tell you how much i appreciate ALL your analysis. it makes me feel so normal. it so jives w/where i'm at. it's like being home here.

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2010 21:13 utc | 6

only w/the original one segment was redacted

should read 'only w/the original, one segment (of one or two sentences) was not redacted'

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2010 21:17 utc | 7

haaretz: WikiLeaks cables expose an ideological Israel-Iran conflict

The Iranian president openly declares that the “Zionist regime” will fall. Israeli leaders are more cautious in public, but in off-the-record conversations, they sound like Ahmadinejad in reverse.

At a meeting in the summer of 2007, Dagan presented the Americans with a comprehensive strategy for toppling the Iranian regime. Israel and the United States, he said, “could change the ruling regime in Iran … We could also get them to delay their nuclear project. Iran could become a normal state.”

Dagan emerges from the cable as an advocate of the strategy of using minimal military force but lots of tricks to wear down the enemy. He proposed fomenting unrest among Iranian students and minorities and exploiting Iran’s economic distress to undermine the regime and create rifts within it. He also suggested unspecified “covert measures.”

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2010 21:39 utc | 8

your astute coverage is further validated b.

WikiLeaks exposes US cover-up of Georgian attack on South Ossetia

Leaked State Department documents provide further evidence that United States authorities knew that the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia, a key ally of Washington in the Caucasus region, initiated the August 2008 war with Russia.

snip...

A cable records that US embassy observers witnessed 30 government buses “carrying uniformed men heading north” towards South Ossetia the day of the Georgian attack.

The Georgian assault on South Ossetia, launched August 7, involved the shelling of the main city of Tskhinvali followed by a ground invasion by 1,500 troops. The operation destroyed hundreds of civilian properties and claimed the lives of an estimated 160 South Ossetians and 48 Russian military personnel.

Despite this knowledge of Georgian military preparations, once the war began, US ambassador John Tefft simply relayed the claims of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili that Russia was the aggressor.

Posted by: juannie | Dec 9 2010 22:15 utc | 9

Big hello to Annie. Annie i have been through all my cableleaks tranches looking at all cables dated 2007-04-18 Cause I finally noticed you had already linked to the cable in the first post (it was the wrong side of 8.00am when I first read your post).
Anyway the packets I have are:
201011290900 internal release date marked as 28/11/10 226 cables

201011292205 internal release date marked as 29/11/10 272 cables

201011301036 internal release date marked as 29/11/10 281 cables

201012031501 internal release date marked as 03/12/10 683 cables

201012041409 internal release date marked as 04/12/10 842 cables

201012082231 internal release date marked as 08/12/10 1193 cables

It is a far from complete set however it does cover most of the period of release, the first day being 28/11/10. The cable you refer to, 07TELAVIV1114 must have been included in the first release because I have a copy of it in every package.
In all my copies the paragrapgh reads

Netanyahu
advised Congress to expedite the legislative effort for
divestment. If that did not work, we could reconsider other
options. Congressman Ackerman said that if Netanyahu came to
Washington, he would hold a hearing on divestment.

Every one seems to be the same. I have done some preliminary searches on Netanyahu NEAR Iran or NEAR Ahmadinejad but haven't found any other cables talking about interfering in the elections yet. FWIW I have been using a handy little seach utility cause the Win7 search function never seems to function consistently and I wanted to use something independent of the Wikileaks search function.

You will see that I have two different packages containing a different number of cables from the 29/11/2010 which if I remember correctly was at the height of the DDOS attacks. There is probably an innocent explanation such as things were getting pretty hectic and sites confused releases.

I don't know I think we need to give these guys/women some latitude for functioning under pressure.

About the only thing I did notice was that not only were the same files in different packages varying sizes, their MD5 and CRC32 hashes were all completely different in each different package.
This made me incredibly suspicious of some sort of funny business. From Wikipedia:

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check the integrity of files.

{I have a utility built into the win& shell that checks file hashes as part of the file properties function because I have been known to get the odd bit of w...z (Shhh!) Over the last year or three the MPIAA and other copywrong organisation have been grabbing the hash of known movie releases and insisting that commercial file servers search for mislabelled files by CRC to find them then delete them.
The problem for Joe W....Z user is then two volumes of an archive from the same release no longer work if they have been repacked. So I sometimes need to check Same same when assholes put trojans in releases checking the hash should tell you if a file has been tampered with}

Anyway WL files all have different hashes for the same file! waaa? paranoia looms. Then I remember that WL grew out of the cypherpunks thing. One of the earliest projects was an anonymous remailer that would change the characteristics of a message that had come in before it was sent out again, without altering the message. That way watchers checking where files had come from couldn't easily tell where they had been relayed to since the identifiers had been stripped and replaced.

I am only guessing here and I have no connections with this mob, but it seems to me we need to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have no doubt it is within their expertise to alter these messages each time they release them, so as to make it really hard for electronic data tracking to follow what is happening.

I will keep looking for anything else about the Iranian election Annie, although really the fact that the amderikan ambassador was acting as a go between relaying info from President Mubarak to Netanyahu who was only leader of the opposition at the time, thereby undermining Olmert is quite a diplomatic no no I understand it.

Same same for talking to government officials inside Iran and encouraging them to subvert the regime. Now that is an act of war in anybody's book.

Everyone is just accepting of these cables without considering the gross interference in sovereign nations' affairs that are revealed. Why?

Can anyone imagine the reaction if these were Russian, Chinese or heaven forfend, Iranian diplomatic cables?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 9 2010 22:44 utc | 10

thanks debs. it occurs to me maybe i made a mistake. maybe i confused the haaretz article about the 07 leak including dagan's 'fomenting unrest' quote w/the original 07 cable. maybe i wasted your time! but where's the dagan cable? i want to see the original.

good catch juannie, so nice to see you around.

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2010 23:03 utc | 11

Annie I believe the cable Ha'aretz refers to may be 07TELAVIV2652 which contains the following:

--------------------------------------------- ----
IRAN: DAGAN REVIEWS ISRAEL'S FIVE PILLAR STRATEGY
--------------------------------------------- ----

¶10. (S) Dagan led discussion on Iran by pointing out that the
U.S. and Israel have different timetables concerning when
Iran is likely to acquire a nuclear capability. He clarified
that the Israel Atomic Energy Commission's (IAEC) timetable
is purely technical in nature, while the Mossad's considers
other factors, including the regime's determination to
succeed. While Dagan acknowledged that there is still time
to "resolve" the Iran nuclear crisis, he stressed that Iran
is making a great effort to achieve a nuclear capability:
"The threat is obvious, even if we have a different
timetable. If we want to postpone their acquisition of a
nuclear capability, then we have to invest time and effort
ourselves."

¶11. (S) Dagan described how the Israeli strategy consists of
five pillars:

A) Political Approach: Dagan praised efforts to bring Iran
before the UNSC, and signaled his agreement with the pursuit
of a third sanctions resolution. He acknowledged that
pressure on Iran is building up, but said this approach alone
will not resolve the crisis. He stressed that the timetable
for political action is different than the nuclear project's
timetable.

B) Covert Measures: Dagan and the Under Secretary agreed not
to discuss this approach in the larger group setting.

C) Counterproliferation: Dagan underscored the need to
prevent know-how and technology from making their way to
Iran, and said that more can be done in this area.

D) Sanctions: Dagan said that the biggest successes had so
far been in this area. Three Iranian banks are on the verge
of collapse. The financial sanctions are having a nationwide
impact. Iran's regime can no longer just deal with the
bankers themselves.

E) Force Regime Change: Dagan said that more should be done
to foment regime change in Iran, possibly with the support of
student democracy movements, and ethnic groups (e.g., Azeris,
Kurds, Baluchs) opposed to the ruling regime.

¶12. (S) Dagan clarified that the U.S., Israel and like-minded
countries must push on all five pillars at the same time.
Some are bearing fruit now; others would bear fruit in due
time, especially if more attention were placed on them.
Dagan urged more attention on regime change, asserting that
more could be done to develop the identities of ethnic
minorities in Iran. He said he was sure that Israel and the
U.S. could "change the ruling regime in Iran, and its
attitude towards backing terror regimes." He added, "We
could also get them to delay their nuclear project. Iran
could become a normal state."

¶13. (S) Dagan stressed that Iran has weak spots that can be
exploited. According to his information, unemployment
exceeds 30 percent nationwide, with some towns and villages
experiencing 50 percent unemployment, especially among 17-30
year olds. Inflation averages more than 40 percent, and
people are criticizing the government for investing in and
sponsoring Hamas, saying that they government should invest
in Iran itself. "The economy is hurting," he said, "and this
is provoking a real crisis among Iran's leaders." He added
that Iran's minorities are "raising their heads, and are
tempted to resort to violence."

¶14. (S) Dagan suggested that more could be done to get the
Europeans to take a tougher stand against Iran. Under
Secretary Burns agreed, and suggested that Israel could help

SIPDIS
by reaching out to the Europeans. Dagan said that Israel is
already doing this, and would continue to do so. Dagan
reiterated the need to strike at Iran's heart by engaging
with its people directly. Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts
are important, but more radio transmissions in Farsi are
needed. Coordination with the Gulf states is helpful, but
the U.S. should also coordinate with Azerbaijan and countries
to the north of Iran, to put pressure on Iran. Russia, he
said, would be annoyed, but it would be fitting, as Russia
appears bent on showing the U.S. that it cannot act globally
without considering Russia.

¶15. (S) Under Secretary Burns stressed that the USG is
focused on Iran not only because of its nuclear program, but
also because it supports terrorism and Shiite militias in
Iraq. The U.S. approach is currently focused on the
diplomatic track and increasing pressure on Iran through
sanctions. Work in the UNSC helps to define the Iranian
nuclear threat as one that affects international security,
and not just that of Israel. While UNSC members Russia,
China and Qatar will water down efforts to increase pressure
on Iran, it is still worthwhile to push for a third sanctions
resolution. In the meantime, the U.S. will encourage the
Europeans, Japan and South Korea to implement unilateral
sanctions against Iran outside the UNSC framework. The U.S.
will continue to encourage banks and financial institutions
to slow down their operations in Iran and financially isolate
it. Regarding military pressure, the Under Secretary noted
that the U.S. has deployed 1-2 carrier battle groups in the
Gulf over the last six months, and that President Bush has
stated that he will interrupt Iran's activity in Iraq. As
for outreach to the Iranian people, the VOA is now
broadcasting programs in Farsi, and the USG is trying to get
more Iranian students to visit the U.S. to promote
people-to-people relations.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 9 2010 23:24 utc | 12

thank you debs ;)

Posted by: annie | Dec 10 2010 0:16 utc | 13

The thing that still bothers me about the Iranian election , the issue that we so hotly debated, concerns the extreme state security, and the military wing of the Iranian establishment, which was put in charge of supervising the election. This military supervision of the result was the primary indicator that aroused so much suspicion about the result. I think, and I still believe that the paradigm which constructs this issue around "color revolution" rhetoric is a superficial and misleading representation of what went down in Iran.

60% of the vote always, and inevitably, goes to republican candidates in Texas; but the progressive faithful are not shot down in the streets; and the hippies are not taken to jails in Travis County to be tortured to death.

I am bugged to the extreme, and I am still pissed off by the blase accounting of events in Iran as if they are nothing but the string-pulling of CIA puppet masters. There is just more to the Green Revolution than the disaffection of a handful prissy quiche-eaters in North Tehran. It is really an insult to the people who have died and those who have been tortured to death in Evin Prison.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 10 2010 0:48 utc | 14

How typical of the whole zionist scam to turn a fairly mundane 5 point plan into "THE FIVE PILLAR STRATEGY" as if Dagan is trying to cover the whole unoriginal, hackneyed plan with a patina of biblical fury, all the better to suck-in what the rather jaded TelAviv bureaucrats obviously consider to be their intellectual inferiors, the Washington gentiles. It dumbfounds me that it is tolerated by the foreign supporters of Israel to be openly treated with such contempt by the zionist leadership.
Before some passer-by starts in I shall point out, I reckon that none of these attitudes are innate racial characteristics, but are the effect on some people raised within a culture which drones on continuously about belonging to some special group "the chosen people".

Lots of cultures have groups within them that push this type of twaddle; what is unusual here is that there are peeps who are outside the culture, seemingly happily supporting this elitism.

Fundie xtian proslytisers havea great deal to answer for, and if a full on war is successfully cranked up to serve a zionist agenda, one that has led children raised in fundie xtian societies, right up the garden path and out the backdoor as cannon fodder, lets hope there are still a few normals afterwards. Still around and ready to hold the Falwells, Robertsons & Swaggerts accountable.
Don'tcha think that while it is criminal to get kids to die in support of bullshit for your community, it is even worse to lie them into dying for another's?

Anyway back to my central point, I would have thought that Israel's strategist would have woken up to the reality by now. That is that the emphasis on making every act in the colonisation of the Jordan Valley into some sort of epic biblical saga, has been doing more to charge up the indigenous poulation than it does for the colonisers.

The momentum shifted some time in the 1980's, I reckon, and although the relative reduction in egregious attacks upon the Palestinians demonstrates that Tel Aviv recognises this, at least in part, there is a sense that the zionist leadership regards this as only being temporary. Give it enough time and the situation will return to 'normality'. The momentum is going the other way of course.

The Mubareks and Abdullahs are on the way out. The empire can't replace them with the chaos it prefers when the population indicates that kiss asses are no longer a goer, because without some stability in some parts of the ME, no one gets any oil out. Worse no secure spots to run operations to keep the people's choices out of power from.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 10 2010 2:27 utc | 15

@Copeland - The thing that still bothers me about the Iranian election , the issue that we so hotly debated, concerns the extreme state security, and the military wing of the Iranian establishment, which was put in charge of supervising the election.

The military wing supervised the election? That is new to me. Any source for that?

60% of the vote always, and inevitably, goes to republican candidates in Texas; but the progressive faithful are not shot down in the streets; and the hippies are not taken to jails in Travis County to be tortured to death.

Well, the progressives in Texas do not attack sheriff offices after an election. In Iran, the demonstrators did riot. There are videos of burning Basji stations etc. How is a state to respond to that?

It is really an insult to the people who have died and those who have been tortured to death in Evin Prison.

The death in a prison after the election did, as far as I can tell, did not happen in Evin prison but in a makeshift prison. That one was immediately closed by Khamenei after that became public and the former head of that improvised prison is now himself in a cell.

Where are the people who ran Abu Graibh now?

Posted by: b | Dec 10 2010 4:11 utc | 16

b, i'd love it if you opened and open thread. there's some alarming news, as usual.

i don't want to get too excited, but i am. i love this site.

Posted by: annie | Dec 10 2010 4:28 utc | 17

An open thread would be great. Not really able to comment on the Wikileaks.

I have missed b and MoA a lot since July 09, in particular during the compelling flotilla effort to break the Gaza blockade last spring, ending in the horrifying attack on the Mavi Marmara, and the apparent international whitewash, or perhaps whiteout would be more apt.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Dec 10 2010 4:41 utc | 18

@copeland - to backup my claims on the prison issue:
Kahrizak Prison, Holding Iranian Protesters, Ordered Closed After Abuses
Kahrizak prison chief dismissed, arrested
Iran puts 12 policemen on trial over Kahrizak prison deaths
Death sentences in Iran prison case

Now please back up your claim that the military ran the election. I seriously doubt that.

Posted by: b | Dec 10 2010 6:17 utc | 19

@b,

I wrote supervising; but having custody of ballot boxes would be more accurate. The IRGC had a role in security around the ballot boxes. Whose sources and citations should trump others; and how are we to judge? You have concluded that, in the end, Ahmedinejad and his faction won 60% of the vote; and that may be true. However this faction was not disposed to accept a victory of the other side; if by some chance it might have happened, judging by what some Iranian sources say about the former election. There appears to be a real schism in Iran's political life that has been building for a few years.

Also, I think the scope of torture in Iranian prisons, those that occurred around the last election, and the forced confessions of dissidents taken into custody, have been a lot more extensive than your commentary suggests. Khamenei's claim of putting an end to the abuse and punishing one man who was arrested, was by no means the end of the abuse. Naj, an Iranian woman who authors a blog called neo-resistance, has published photos from Iran and details of torture and news about forced confessions of those who were part of the protests. As far as I can tell, there seems to be a considerable number of families in Iran who have had a loved one die in custody. The first link above I chose randomly because the hour is late here; but I have read Naj's blog closely from time to time. and there are consistent reports that people get executed and tortured for political reasons in Tehran and elsewhere in the country.

If we remain cynical, we can say that the people who ran Abu Ghraib, as well as those in Iran who killed protesters and winked at executions, will never be brought to trial. But I prefer to hold the hope for justice, so that those who suffered at the hands of authority will at last see a time when justice is meted out to those who harmed their loved ones.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 10 2010 6:42 utc | 20

I will read more because perhaps I'm behind the curve on this information. I remain, however, skeptical of the constant framing of this story around color revolution intrigue and theories.

The scenario that may ring true in countries like Ukraine and Georgia do not strike me as very likely in Iran because of the strong culture (and rightfully so) of suspicion of USA and its nefarious plots to destabilize the country. Iranians have had their antenna up and have braced themselves against these inroads for a long time. Nor do I believe that the thrust of the Green Revolution is a battle that squares westernized quiche-eating secularists against Islamic religionists. A significant political faction in Iran obviously wants to strengthen the Islamic Republic, by reforming it, and eliminating some of the corruption, and the authoritarian harshness. And I hope they can achieve their goals.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 10 2010 7:15 utc | 21

"I will read more because perhaps I'm behind the curve on this information. I remain, however, skeptical of the constant framing of this story around color revolution intrigue and theories."

War and the Conquest of Eurasia: Iran’s "Green Wave" Opposition and its Ties to Global Geopolitics

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya does a great deal of research for all his analysis. hope this might provide some answers.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21584

Posted by: Rd. | Dec 10 2010 15:44 utc | 22

This web has been tracking the additions, removals and censorship of the leaked cables. They have links to all the torrents and their own torrent to an automatically generate diff between releases.

I read a few cables from the embassies around Iran (Baku, Ashgbad, the places were the US seems to have 'Iran watchers') related with the elections but it was either known rumors directly from the opposition book or bits about Rafsanjani maneuvers that may be just rumors as well. There was one where one of those embassy agents was talking with truck drivers crossing the frontier and all high because getting told what he wanted to get told by those he talked with.

This one shows the US looking for problems (stirring minorities) and founds improving conditions and people voting Ahmedinejad:

Liking Karroubi, Voting Ahmedinejad --------------------------------------------- ----

¶7. (C) Both sources opined that the large majority of
Kashgai personally like Mehdi Karroubi, regarding him
favorably as an ethnic Lur with sympathy and understanding
for their traditions. However, both stressed that most
Kashgai are apolitical and pragmatic, and focused on their
immediate personal situation, not larger issues. For this
reason, they opined that most Kashgai probably voted for
Ahmadinejad, as a result of gratitude for improved health,
education, and infrastructure services and/or monetary
inducements.

Posted by: ThePaper | Dec 11 2010 21:01 utc | 23

Iran accuses US, Britain, Israel of deadly suicide bomb attack

I believe em...

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 16 2010 12:08 utc | 24