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Cutting Iran off from the Internet: Prelude to War?

Chris | 04.02.2008 21:39 | Analysis | Technology | Terror War | World

One undersea cable being cut was odd, then it was two and now four, bloggers are noticing, for example: OK, Stop Now, People Start Noticing!  http://nrrd.de/dasbuch/hadez/ok_stop_now_people_start_noticing

Undersea Cables Near Iran
Undersea Cables Near Iran


The Iranian state funded media is reporting:

"Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems."

 http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=41601&sectionid=351020502

Cutting communication cables before launching a war has happened before:

"At the outset of the [first world] war, the Germans had five transatlantic cables that ran through the English Channel. One went to Brest in France, another to Vigo in Spain, one to Tenerife in North Africa and two to New York via the Azores. The English cable ship Telconia cut them all in England's first offensive action in the war. This left a cable that ran between West Africa and Brazil that was largely American-owned that the Germans could use. In short order the allies ended that source of direct cable communications with the overseas world. Consequently, Germany was forced to use their powerful wireless station at Nauen, just a few miles outside Berlin. From this moment, German messages were routinely picked from the air and began pouring into the offices of British Naval Intelligence. In order to capture this flood of information, four new allied listening stations were established along the English coast with direct wires to Admiral Hall's offices. The positive result from this investment could not be overemphasized."

 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_2004_July/ai_n6142317/pg_2

Just when people thought the war with Iran was off at least until the Democrats take over the White House...

Chris

Additions

More bad news

04.02.2008 22:15

If the above wasn't bad enough:

"BAGHDAD: Attacks using Iranian-made roadside bombs in a key part of Baghdad rose in January to the highest level in a year, the U.S. military said."

 http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?196962

And:

"The United States described on Monday Iran's launching a rocket into space as "unfortunate," which, the White House said, will isolate the Islamic republic from the international community."

 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/05/content_7569666.htm

But far worse:

"Iran was scheduled to inaugurate its Oil Bourse this coming week."

"That probably isn't going to happen because all internet access in Iran was cut over the weekend (the undersea cables were chopped)."

 http://www.energybulletin.net/39844.html

This is what a US war on Iran would really be about -- the Iranian Oil Bourse and the threat to the petrodollar:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/361578.html#What_is_it_really_about

Was Paul Craig Roberts right when he wrote last year, If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran,  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/372796.html -- let's hope not...

Chris


Three Internet Cables Slashed in a Week: Has Iran lost all Internet Connectivity

04.02.2008 22:20

CNN reports that: “An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, THE THIRD LOSS of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days.

The first two cables “account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East”, so it is expected that the loss of the third cable will plunge large parts of the Middle East into darkness.

According to Mathaba Net, the latest incident took place “two days after the cable cut which "cut off Iran" and affected the rest of the Middle East and West Asia. Internet Traffic Report web site reports that Iran has lost all Internet connectivity. ( http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm)

Israel and Iraq's Internet connections are still “intact”. (Mathaba.net  http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580589)

“Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's Internet Service Provider "DU", said that the incident was "very unusual” and that the cause of the incident "had not yet been identified."

From Mathaba News:

“The only 2 countries that were unaffected were Israel and Iraq, the only two close Anglo-American allies in the region, both remaining completely unaffected by the cable cuts, leading to theories for the causes of the cuts, which have so far been given as having been caused by ships dragging their anchors across the cables. The fact that two rare incidents have happened in the same week, and both with cables owned by the same company, on either sides of Israel and the importance of the Internet to telecommunications and business, lends suspicion to the events.” (Mathaba.net  http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580589)

Coincidence or Network Warfare?

Recently, a document entitled Information Operation Roadmap was declassified by the Pentagon because of a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The importance of information warfare is clearly laid out in this document. Here is an extended excerpt from an article by Brent Jessop, “Full Spectrum Information Warfare” published by Global Research:

“Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future..... Information operations should be centralized under the Office of the Secretary of Defence and made a core military competency.

"Objective: IO [information operations] becomes a core competency. The importance of dominating the information spectrum explains the objective of transforming IO into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations. The charge to the IO Roadmap oversight panel was to develop as concrete a set of action recommendations as possible to make IO a core competency, which in turn required identifying the essential prerequisites to become a core military competency."

Mike Whitney
- Homepage: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7987


Comments

Hide the following 13 comments

not clear cut

05.02.2008 01:00

IThe Egyptian government is now saying no ships were present at the site of the latest cut, which indicates that it is deliberate. RonF on the MediaLens board cleverly pointed out Iranian located websites are up and running. That isn't a metric of bandwidth as traffic from Europe to Iranian government websites is pretty negligable in terms of bandwidth. There is no mention of the cable cuts affecting Iran in any of the Iranian news websites, but again, that is only indicative as they often are slow to report on western mainstream headline stories. Their press is full of the Iranian space launch - which I think may be relevant to the cable cut.

I am someone who is worried about the risk of an American attack on Iran. If it happens I don't think we will be given time to react in advance, I think they will just attack. Until they stop 'pre-emptive' wars then peace activists should be premptive too.

I don't think slow cable cuts indicate a US attack. I think it is more likely that it is someone who doesn't like Arabs doing a bit of industrial sabotage perhaps for propaganda reasons. Because Israel used to have to pretend it was non-nuclear, they were denied their own space mission, and having their first astronaut on board the ill fated space shuttle hurt, so maybe this a 'fuck you' to the arab world to distract from the Iranian space launch. This isn't even necessarily state-sponsored, it could just be a rich geek with a mini-sub.

The sub-text here is a space rocket is another word for an Inter Continental Ballistic Missile. The ICBM really is Nazi technology - their A9/10 was intended to be piloted into New York, and NASA was built around von Braun,

danny


A wounded animal

05.02.2008 13:33

A common error: by far most Iranians are Persian not Arab, and Arabic is only spoken by a very small minority. Iran does have a lot of cultural ties with Arabia, especially religious (which is also a massive schism with extremist Sunnis who reject Shia) but it also has a lot of ethnic ties with Central Asia. A war with Iran could spill into Central Asia. An area where the US, Russia and China are already dancing around each other.

The US is in a very precarious situation now, it got a thorough beating in Iraq in terms of their 'game plan'. But its economy is floundering, which historically is often a cue for a "foreign policy solution." The rich are like casinos, they don't mind playing the game so long as they aren't losing.

Iran is a much more populous country than Iraq and in many sectors a lot less disaffected with the regime (though there is much opposition to Ahmadinejad in some poorer rural communities. The extent of which is difficult to gauge in the maelstrom of propaganda.) It has also close ties with Russia, which makes it a tricky target. As much as the US likes to dismiss Russia, it is still a nuclear power and still has the capability to mobilise a war. And Russia has a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain than the US.

The US 'game' in Iraq was a very slow burner. It started off with disavowing Hussein with a campaign of propaganda, then used (some say engineered) Kuwait as a pretext to "bomb it back into the stone age" and impose a war of siege that was even more devastating. Finally it used outright fantasy to commit some of the worst war crimes since WW2 and invade.

The lack of success in Iraq and Afghanistan also means that its "Big Stick" reputation has suffered considerably. This could also be a motivational factor in attacking Iran.

We are seeing a repeat of stage 1 (propaganda). I doubt the US is the position to launch a full-scale war on Iran without effecting stage 2 (attrition). The UN Security Council is a loss less compliant on the 'Iran Game' than it was with Iraq. I think they only way they could get a repeat of the Oil for Food genocide from the UN would be off the back of some cataclysm. So their next move is difficult to predict.

My hunch is that if the US is going to undertake another major campaign, they'll pick a fight they think they could win with both hands tied behind their back and half asleep. But that being said they had to sack so many Pentagon generals to get their "plans" for Iraq through, they could just be insane enough to go after Iran despite what all the experts have to say and despite how Iraq has played out. But that reasoning could swing the other way too.

It could very well be the end of the United States as the "World Police" if they do. It could be the start of WW3.

I would expect them at any rate to target all methods of communication but primarily the military, governmental and other cellular networks if they were about to strike.

Zarathustra


Pentagon Plan to 'Fight the Net'

05.02.2008 19:06

Declassified but Censored


The Computer Says Know!

05.02.2008 21:16

Coming soon to an internet near you - Cyberstorm II! This is the DHS exercise in Full Spectrum Dominance!

Last time it was live on the www and hospitals were put out with the DHS virus, unknown others were freaked out by the psy-op payload (blackmail) - allegedly, no proof provided!

The MSM carries a different story, as does the blogosphere! Last time nobody cottoned on to the skinny, hence the exercise worked!!! Based on the success of Cyberstorm Rummy said The War Against Terrorism (T.W.A.T. - say it!) would last another 75 years!!!

He knows it - the Pentagon can not only control the media, they can also control and eliminate word of mouth internet campaigns, rumours and whispers - for the next 75 years!!!

The truth has been removed from this world and bin replaced with a fabrication! All civilisation has already been lost, but few noticed! Belief in the fabrication is now so ingrained that there is no going back, maybe only a crazy historian, a century from now might do it - see the truth!

Who knows if cable cuts are part of the game this time! It's only a game, but there are implications! If Iran gets cut off then they will have to stop using Google Analytics for statistics on their state news website! Maybe they use 'awstats' instead, but then...!

The world is about ready for wargames on the www, bring on Cyberstorm and let's see what they have got! There is no better wwwargame than live, with the support of Full Spectrum Dominance and against 'the axis of evil'!

Whilst we are Obama-watching and Hillary hating they could achieve all with Cyberstorm - no need to send the planes to Balkanise Iran's civilian broadcast and satellite uplink capability, to leave just the bravest ham radio!

But do they do ham in Iran?!

Will their spam levels will go down?!

Know knows, maybe Rummy does!

Thee Exclamation Mark Liberation Front!


a very random test of this

06.02.2008 00:22

...visited about 5 different Iranian hosted government ministries just now. They all took just a few seconds to load. There are loads of tools out there for checking this more consistently though should anyone else feel inclined.

Krop


Krop

06.02.2008 12:58

Go here and select Islamic Republic of Iran from the drop down menu:

 http://www.proxyserverprivacy.com/ipaddress_range.php


Paste the ranges into a tool like this:

 http://www.eusing.com/ipscan/free_ip_scanner.htm

And scan.

Visiting websites is no guarantee that teh site isn't hosted outside the country of its owner. Using "tracert www.sitename.domain" under the WIndows command line will show you what the path to a website is.

Zarathustra


Anglo-American Zionist Axis of Evil

06.02.2008 20:17

The cutting of these undersea cables is a form of terrorism in everything but name. If something similar had happened to the USA or UK, you can be sure that their media, regimes, and indeed people would be crying very loudly about Terrorism.

Most probably, the hands of America, England, and Israel are behind this act, who as always are up to their usual devious imperial machinations.

The USA, United Kingdom, and Israel have been working covertly to destabilize Iran by supporting separatist militants in Balochistan and elsewhere, covert bombings, as well as fomenting anti-government protests disguised behind the standard Anglo-American lies about "democracy." (This is especially ironic given the fact that England and America are themselves undemocratic, proto-fascist nations in all but name--though their brainwashed citizens still haplessly believe otherwise.)



Lord Curzon


Stroik o loit guvna!

06.02.2008 23:30

"though their brainwashed citizens still haplessly believe otherwise"

Well thankfully we have intellectuals like you to tell us limey thickos what's what.

Can I stop tugging my forelock now?

Patronsing cunt.

Cockernee Geezah Dick van Dyke


Cockney C*cksucker

07.02.2008 09:04

You afraid of the truth, dog? The only patronizing cunt here is you bastard as well as your bloodthirsty Britzieland.

England is nothing more than a nation of inbred bluebood bastards that have waged genocidal colonial wars for centuries from Asia to Africa to the Middle East. These crimes, they justify behind the lie of spreading democracy or liberty to those "uncivilized Wogs" ... too bad that England itself has never been a democracy and never will be.

Iraq and Iran are only their latest targetted victims.

This punk just demonstrates that so-called Anglo-American "activists" are no better than Tony Bliar or any other bloody British ruler that they whine about.

Scratch the surface, they are all Anglo nationalist scum. Treat them as such.

Lord Curzon


Some corrections

07.02.2008 12:47

1. I'm not a punk, I'm a hippy.

2. Only morons believe that all people are represented by the actions of a barely democratic government elected by a minority. Class theory isn't your strong point is it.

3. The United Kingdom is FOUR countries and a load of other semi-independent territories. Only an illiterate would think England was the whole place.

4. England isn't inbred. It has a long history of influxes. The Celts, the Norse, the Germans, the French, Africans, Poles etc etc etc etc. But I expect you are from one of the former Colonies, which are in sharp denial of the crimes that took place to establish their European territories in someone else's land. The original Euro Trash.

5. Only someone with the IQ of a dead cat thinks that "Tony Bliar" was funny for more than 5 minutes.

6. Only an idiot would think that anyone here identifies themselves proudly with Britain's imperialist past. Class theory isn't your strong point is it.

7. Do you think you are lecturing your senile grandmother here? No one here bar the trolls is going to argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are anything but illegal on so many levels. And as for Iran, there is no clear evidence of any build up yet. But the merest moves in the wrong direction gets heavily covered here.

8. Now fuck off with your parochial, reductionist mindset and that soap box back to whatever poor place y/our ancestors stole off the locals. And don't come back until you have figured out the difference between Indymedia and the Daily Mail.

If I wanted to be ranted at by puffed up spotty nobheads I'd join the SWP.

Cockernee Geezah Dick van Dyke


5th Undersea Internet Cable Cut

08.02.2008 23:27

"February 7, 2008: It began with two undersea telecommunications cables that served as data links between Europe and the Middle East being cut, but it’s now escalated with a further three undersea internet cables being cut, with major disruptions to internet services."

Chris
- Homepage: http://www.idm.net.au/story.asp?id=9297


Go correct yourself, cockney

09.02.2008 01:55

Thanks for that patronizing list of corrections on The Class Struggle, Professor. But in case you hadn't realized, playing the class theory card don't give you a political alibi for Anglo-American war crimes. You sound upset because your cherished United Kingdom has been called out as a Terrorist state and its "Liberal Democracy" exposed as one of its many legitimizing lies.

-"Only morons believe that all people are represented by the actions of a barely democratic government elected by a minority. Class theory isn't your strong point is it."

And only defensive Anglo apologists push your tired alibi: "I'm totally innocent. It's all the ruling class' fault!" Since you're the expert in The Class Struggle, you should understand the concepts of Labor Imperialism and Labor Aristocracy. The "working class" (and middle class) of Imperialist nations like England or America also benefit from the spoils of empire. And when push comes to shove, this class will effectively support their own nation, or tacitly alibi for it--like you.

If the problem were *only* the British ruling class, the British political system would have imploded long ago. Like the USA, the ruling class and its crimes continue to exist because of the implicit support of the people themselves. And last time I checked, I don't see any mass revolutionary upheaval happening in the UK or USA--except in the minds of hippy idiots.

-"The United Kingdom is FOUR countries and a load of other semi-independent territories. Only an illiterate would think England was the whole place."

So fucking what? Only a self-absorbed British Nationalist thinks this makes a damn difference to issues of war. Your precious "FOUR countries" of the U.K. are imperialist aggressors engaged in bombing, invading, or genociding Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention threatening other nations.

"Only an idiot would think that anyone here identifies themselves proudly with Britain's imperialist past. Class theory isn't your strong point is it."

The cockney clown tries to play Class Card again. Only an idiot would think that the *mainstream* antiwar movement here is not a trojan horse. At best, the "peace" movement in general is primarily a political safety valve. In fact, wasn't war criminal TONY BLIAR himself once a Peacenik and member of CND? Worse, some activists are more interested in downplaying Anglo-American war crimes, either by relegating it to a thing of the past (cough) or the fault of individual rulers.

"Do you think you are lecturing your senile grandmother here? No one here bar the trolls is going to argue that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are anything but illegal on so many levels. And as for Iran, there is no clear evidence of any build up yet. But the merest moves in the wrong direction gets heavily covered here."

I'm giving the 411 to a British son-of-a-bitch, whose national deceptions need to be shot down. You think that spouting some "Class Theory" rhetoric and pimping for the Labor Aristocracy can divert responsibility from those "embarrassing" crimes the Anglo-American Zionist axis is guilty of? You best think again.

Heck, you're even trying to deny that Iran is under attack. Just because the oh-so-radical Indymedia hasn't told you this yet, don't mean it's not happening. Even some Conservatives and Zionists have admitted the war against Iran has already begun:

"War on Iran Has Begun"
 http://www.nysun.com/article/35990

"The US War with Iran has Already Begun"
 http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0620-31.htm

There's no "clear evidence," your ass. It's pathetic these Right Wingers are more honest about the reality of the war against Iran than you are.

-"Now fuck off with your parochial, reductionist mindset and that soap box back to whatever poor place y/our ancestors stole off the locals. And don't come back until you have figured out the difference between Indymedia and the Daily Mail."

No, punk. You fuck the hell off and take your wounded Britzie nationalist pride with you. You even have a hard time admitting that is was the British Empire that spawned the colonial settler nations of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Israel in the first place--probably something that your inbred Anglo ancestors participated in?

White hippy-punk posers in general ain't nothing more than the "Left/Progressive Boot" of Anglo-American Colonialism. All your Labor Faker propaganda can't disguise that.

"Saddams Execution: The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?"
 http://209.216.62.84/artman/publish/printer_23660.shtml

Lord Curzon


Iran War

09.02.2008 08:50

"Heck, you're even trying to deny that Iran is under attack. Just because the oh-so-radical Indymedia hasn't told you this yet, don't mean it's not happening."

This isn't true.

Feature (front page, middle column) article from a year ago:

MI6 Iran Disinfo: The Prelude to War?
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/361578.html

Which contains:

"Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote last summer that the war had already started."

Which links to:

UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/07/345908.html

Another feature article on the Guardian's Iran coverage from last year:

Imperial Disinformation: The Guardian's Iran/Iraq Coverage
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371753.html

Some Indymedia activists and readers and posters *have* been ringing alarm bells on this issue for years.

Chris


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