— 🇮🇷 Iran's Presidential Election is in 34 days, here's what you need to know:

The political scene in Iran is extremely complicated, but when simplified, it basically consists of two main flanks: Conservatives and Moderates.

The Conservatives are politicians that fit squarely in the camp of the revolution. They stand 100% behind Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and they are generally considered more loyal to the revolution's original values. They put emphasis on keeping Iran an Islamic, strong and independent nation, with a foreign policy that could be dubbed 'Iran-first', trying not to rely on outside powers. Most politicians who belong in this camp opposed the 2015 Nuclear Deal with the US, for example.

The Moderates, or sometimes called 'Reformists', take a more liberal approach to interpreting the values of the Islamic Revolution. They are still ostensibly in favour of the Islamic Republic and its ideals, but wish to modernize and reorganize the country in a way that they feel fits the current era. Most of them support less strict rules on Hijab, returning to negotiations with the United States, and neoliberal market economics.

Some Moderate candidates are secretly anti-Islamic Republic, but hide behind their close relations with genuine pro-IR people to conceal their true views. They know they cannot voice their opposition publicly, because no one would vote for them, and they would get disqualified.

Iran's last Moderate President, Hassan Rouhani (President from 2013-2021) caused a major decline in economic development. By forming the Nuclear Deal with the U.S. in 2015, he put the Iranian economy at the mercy of foreign powers and investments. Khamenei, who was against the Nuclear Deal from the start, warned that the United States would never keep their end of the agreement.

In 2017, he was proven right, and the U.S. unilaterally pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, despite Iran's compliance, which was backed up by the IAEA. Inflation in Iran skyrocketed, and the economy experienced its worst state in 45 years.

All of this led to the Conservative President Ebrahim Raeesi winning a 72% landslide victory in the 2021 election. Turnout hit a record low, because reformists had lost faith in their candidates due to past failures to deliver on their election promises. As a result, the vast majority of those who voted were hardline IR supporters.

If President Raeesi ran for office again in 2025, he would most likely have won a second term. But due to his unforeseen martyrdom, others will have to stand up. Until now, we don't know the candidates, but I fully expect the Conservatives to win another landslide victory, as the Reformist voter base has become idle, and I doubt they will put up any meaningful candidates, unless they decide to put forward Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister from 2013-2021, who enjoys considerable support among Moderates.

Lastly, the dynamics of Iranian politics have changed quite a lot. Back in the 2000's and 2010's, if someone was anti-Islamic Republic, they would simply vote for a Reformist / Moderate candidate, to show their opposition to the regime. This was dangerous, because they actually had a way of changing the country's direction. Unlike what some people think, the President in Iran matters a lot.

Now, the people who are anti-IR simply don't vote at all, or cast blank protest votes, because they say 'all Iranian politicians are the same'. This is extremely dumb, they are shooting themselves in the foot, because if they all united to vote for a Reformist they could shake the country up pretty bad. But it is good for the Islamic Republic and its supporters, so I am quite happy they reached this conclusion, that they excluded themselves from the democratic process.

Conclusion: Anti-IR Iranians likely won't vote at all, a small number of them will vote for the Moderate candidate, but the Conservative candidate will likely win another landslide victory like Raeesi in 2021, due to overwhelming participation of the pro-IR and religious masses.

@Middle_East_Spectator

⚠️ Hamas announced they ambushed an Israeli army team inside a tunnel in Jabalya.

They have been killed and kidnapped successfully. Gear implies a special forces team.

Did the lying Israeli army miss any soldier/s?

🗣️ The Israeli army spokesman issues a statement and denies that they lost any soldier in Gaza.

⚡️#BREAKING Red alert in northern Tel Aviv

⚡️More missiles being fired from Hamas in Gaza towards Tel Aviv

BREAKING: Professor Gurgen Melikyan announces Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan as Prime Minsiter candidate for the ‘Tavush for the Homeland’ movement.

In the aftermath, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan announced that he will be temporarily suspending his clergy status in order to be the candidate.

🇵🇸A fire broke out in the tents of the displaced people as a result of the airstrikes on Rafah

🇭🇺— In an interview with Patriot youtube podcast channel, Orban defended Admiral Governor Miklos Horthy, who lead Hungary between 1920-1944, that he wanted to stay out of the Second World War, until Germany left no choice and forced Hungary into it.

🇮🇱 Kibbutz Margaliot mayor: "We will close the military operations room in the settlement, and IDF soldiers will not be allowed to enter."

Margaliot, which sits right on the Lebanese border, is a common target to Hezbollah's attacks. This statement shows the amount of dissatisfaction growing from the IDF's inability to protect settlements of the Galilee from Lebanon.

🌹 The Israeli murderous attack on the hospital entrance in Bint Jbeil killed the civilian Ali Wazani.

10 other civilians were injured.

🇬🇪 A Georgian parliamentary committee approved overriding the president's veto on the law on foreign agents.

🔴 Using WhatsApp helps the Israeli army pick targets in Gaza

In April 2024, +972 Magazine journalist Yuval Abraham revealed the existence of Lavender ⁠AI: a system that automatically picks bombing targets. Lavender collects information on most of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses the likelihood that each particular person is active in Hamas or PIJ, giving almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100.

The article said that the current commander of Unit 8200 wrote in a guide book for Lavender ⁠AI that the features being used to select targets include “being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.”

“The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender.” Israel has deployed additional automated systems, e.g., ‘Where's ⁠Daddy’ signals when a target has entered his family home.

Last week, The Intercept wrote that many WhatsApp employees fear that Israel has been using a vulnerability based on traffic analysis. According to their assessment: “[Deep Packet] Inspection and analysis of network traffic is completely invisible to us, yet it reveals the connections between our users: who is in a group together, who is messaging who, and (hardest to hide) who is calling who”... [A typical threat is due to peer-to-peer calls between users, which can be disabled on Telegram since many years ago but on WhatsApp only since Nov ⁠8, 2023 ⁠!]

And worse ⬇

⋯ It is possible that WhatsApp's parent company is collaborating with Israel to help it fight ‘terrorism’.

In his blog, Paul Biggar, founder of Tech For Palestine, asks “whether [the Israeli forces] get this information from Meta”⁠ directly? “Why has Meta not released their transparency report for the 2nd half of 2023? [...] Will Meta immediately rescind access to any WhatsApp information from the Israeli government, army, and law enforcement?”

He recalls that Meta's “Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen, is their most senior policy decision maker. He is Israeli, lives in Tel Aviv, and was in Unit 8200. Unit 8200 is the Israeli NSA and is the department that built and runs Lavender. Insiders tell me that Rosen is the person most associated with the anti-‘anti-zionism’ policies, and is also responsible for the suppression of Palestinian content.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, has been a “significant supporter of Israel's propaganda”. For example, he donated $125k to ZAKA - one of the groups that created Oct ⁠7 false atrocity propaganda.

On a separate note, WhatsApp's servers store user metadata: social graphs and connection data, this could be tapped by U.S. intelligence under the FISA/PRISM programs, and part of it shared with Israel.

🇱🇧❌🇮🇱 Wide Red Alerts in the Galilee tip (UAV intrusion).