Some of the things they put out at Truthstream Media are extremely compelling. Then there are times when their videos are a bit blah. This is one of those times, but don’t be discouraged. There’s actually some pretty interesting information to glean from all of this.

Time does seem to be getting faster, or at least passing faster. Most attribute it to age. Some have speculated about the changing speed of light which scientists have demonstrated is getting slower. Since time, space, and light are all relative to each other, a slowing speed of light would actually make us feel like time is getting faster. But the notion that Truthstream Media latched onto is both the real likely cause as well as an interesting bit of information in and of itself.

Our attention spans are dropping thanks the prevalence of information and media in our lives. When once it could take hours just to download a television show, today we can stream movies without interruption on our smartphones. We’re able to bounce around from website to website, app to app, all in our search for the next stimulation, the next dopamine hit.

Since we’re able to get information more quickly, is that the reason our attention spans are growing shorter? Is that also the reason time seems to be moving faster? Know knows. It’s a decent video, albeit not their best.

There are times when Iran seems to be one of the most sophisticated nations in the world when it comes to covert operations. They don’t have the level of techniques employed by espionage experts in the United States, Russia, or Israel, nor do they have the technical prowess of China or North Korea, but they have a level of deceptiveness that makes them formidable nonetheless.

But when it comes to disinformation campaigns, they’re ineptitude is almost comical, as Citizen Lab revealed early this morning. The media and technology watchdog and research group has built a reputation for uncovering some of the most complex disinformation schemes conducted across the internet. Their comprehensive uncovering of Endless Mayfly is another huge feather in their bountiful cap.

Here are the key findings from their report:

It was initially believed the organization was a Russian proxy, but their techniques and subjects eventually pointed to a likelihood of Iran being involved. While Citizen Lab rightly proclaims a likelihood instead of certainty of Iranian involvement, the data seems to be so clearly linked to Iran that there are only two reasonable explanations: either it is someone trying awfully hard to appear to be linked to Iran, or it’s Iran.

I’m going with the latter.

Their favored technique seems to be establishing fake websites with names close enough to legitimate websites that they’re able to fool prolific social media users and eager journalists dying for a juicy story. Buzzfeed News fell victim to one such instance on a website that looked identical to The Guardian, but that used a URL with a Turkish symbol replacing the “i” in “Guardian.”

They weren’t the only ones fooled. This operation seems to be quite vast.

But there were other obvious signs of falsehood that should have been noticed by the “useful idiots” propagating their disinformation. One article linked to from the report shows plenty of errors that a trained journalist should have noticed, and in this case, he did.

The story sent to Al-Ahmed is so loaded with spelling and grammatical mistakes, it’s a wonder anyone could get fooled if this is indicative of the quality of Iran’s disinformation work.

If we assume Iran is, indeed, behind all of this, what does that tell us? We know tensions have been rising between Iran and both the U.S. and Israel. We can assume if they’ve been working at this since at least early 2016, they’ve had an agenda that extended to long before President Trump was elected. They probably found it unlikely he would be. So their goals weren’t to influence the U.S. elections as much as they were intended to shift sentiment from the rest of the world towards the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

The full report is a wonderful read. As research on such topics, this one is exhaustive and enlightening.

But it still doesn’t answer the question of what this all means for the geopolitical positioning of Iran. They clearly want something, but that something has very likely changed since inception. Their economy was starting to flourish when President Obama was in office. Under President Trump, their economy has begun a rapid fall, prompting alleged actions ranging from sabotaging oil tankers to preparing to strike U.S. targets. They are desperate, and having access to a disinformation organization may help them seed discontent with the United States as our military stance in the Persian Gulf becomes more aggressive.

Iran has been acting like a wild animal cornered by superior forces ever since President Trump started pulling back the layers of protection given to them by President Obama. What will they do next? Their desperation is showing.

Rumors of wars keep popping up in the Middle East and around the world as the United States continues to have our allies prodded and provoked. The latest example is Iran, which U.S. military officials have fingered for the wave of oil tanker bombings over the weekend.

BREAKING: The Associated Press reports that an American military team’s initial assessment of the 4 ships that were bombed over the weekend in the Persian Gulf is that "Iranian or Iranian-backed proxies" were behind the attack

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 13, 2019

The Associated Press reported that a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “said each ship has a 5- to 10-foot hole in it, near or just below the water line, and the team’s early belief is that the holes were caused by explosive charges.”

Was this the intelligence the United States received last month, likely from Ali Nasiri, that prompted the dramatic increase in our military presence in the Persian Gulf? If it is, then this could mark the beginning of actions taken by the United States and/or Israel against Iran.

Opinion

Not to sound too conspiratorial, but the timing of all this is strange. Now that the United States has a stronger military presence in the region, one would think it should have been enough to dissuade Iran from carrying out such attacks. This leads me to two possible conclusions:

• Iran wants to get attacked. Their economy is in such shambles and getting worse, they feel if they can prompt an attack against them while still being able to claim plausible deniability by using their proxies instead of their military, they will get the sympathies and aid from gullible nations around the world and continue to paint the United States and Israel as the aggressors.
• Someone staged the attacks to implicate Iran. Saudi Arabian proxies would be the most likely culprits.

The former is by far more likely than the latter, but nothing should be ruled out until we have all the facts.

Either way, Iran continues to play a very dangerous game, one they know they cannot win but that they hope they can survive until they get a handle on all of the moving parts in this situation. Even a massive attack from the United States could leave Iran with their current leadership structure intact; it would not behoove the United States to get involved in regime change now or any time in the reasonable future considering our track record in such things.

Quote

“We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything it will be a very bad mistake, if they do anything. I’m hearing little stories about Iran. If they do anything, they will suffer greatly. We’ll see what happens with Iran.” – President Trump

Final Thoughts

I’m against getting involved in any wars that don’t involve us, but Iran continues to creep closer and closer to direct conflict. It’s as if they want us to attack while painting themselves as non-aggressors. These are dangerous times.