Iranian technicians at the Uranium Conversion Facilities (UCF) in Isfahan. Credit: AFP.
5 January 2013: This past Wednesday, January 2nd, a small blurb was posted at 8:50 in the morning by the BBC Persian Service TV journalist Kasra Naji reporting that an edict had been issued by Iranian authorities for the evacuation of all 1.5 million residents of Esfahan, Iran. The report said the evacuation was ordered due to emergency levels of pollution in the city. This tiny blurb was the root cause of a viral reaction on the web, from Jerusalem (The Jerusalem Post) to Washington, D.C. (The Washington Free Beacon and The Washington Times).
The nature of the viral pandemic of Internet reports is due to the fact that Esfahan is host to a Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) owned and operated by the apocalyptic-minded regime of Iran. The Esfahan UCF is located to the southeast of the city. Very recent reports from the UCF are anything but confidence building regarding safety protocols within a plant whose primary function is converting raw yellowcake uranium into highly toxic uranium hexaflouride or UF6. UF6 is further refined in thousands of Iranian government centrifuges to produce the fissile cores of nuclear weapons.
So the question being asked today is, was this tiny news blurb actually newsworthy? Was there any basis of fact behind it? Well, it was published by the BBC, it went viral and has not since been retracted or corrected. In fact, the blurb originator took to Twitter yesterday to insist it was based on the fact that there are emergency levels of "pollution" in Esfahan. So, being the professionally-trained OSINT (Open Source INTelligence) collector that I am, I took to the web and began searching international weather reports for Esfahan. I did not see any adverse air quality reports for the city this week, but I did see a prevailing 5 MPH breeze passing through the UCF and towards the city of Esfahan.
This collected knowledge encouraged much deeper data mining. I'll let you dear reader be the judge of whether or not I found a vein of valuable intelligence ore or not.
First, some brief established facts. We know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is ruled by apocalyptic Shi'a Twelver regime
that has its bloody hands all over its own people, all over the people of Lebanon, all over the Syrian people in that nation's ongoing civil war, as well as in
destabilization efforts, acts of war or casus belli in numerous
Sunni-majority countries of the Arabian Peninsula. We also know that Iran is engaged in ongoing
warfare against the State of Israel which has been oscillating between
full-scale combat operations in various places and low intensity conflict, not to mention
continuing provocations and outright military aggression in the Strait
of Hormuz against most of the nations of the world except for Russia and
Red China.
We further know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not engaged in these endeavors unopposed by the West (i.e. the US, UK, NATO and Israel for example). We know that cyberwarfare attacks have been plaguing Iranian nuclear weapons related activities for some years now in what is known as "Operation Olympic Games," or as I like to call it, "OOG." OOG has been going not-stop in hitting Iran with particularly nasty but quite successful cyberwar weapons having real cool names like Stuxnet, Duku, Flame, Gauss and "The Bug."
So, here's why the Esfahan news blurb and viral reaction this week are important; why they count as important intelligence Indications and Warnings (I&W) of things to come.
The apocalyptic regime in Iran issued a real-world edict for 1.5 million people to get up and move out of an Iranian city. These are people who, for the most part, despise the regime and distrust anything it says. The Iranian people are aware of multiple assassinations of nuclear scientists, massive explosions and mass fatalities that have occurred at IRGC-run nuclear and missile production facilities all over the country for many, many months now. Is there a single report of millions of ordinary Iranian people in the streets protesting these attacks upon the Ayatollah's regime? Well, not counting the government-paid Basij thugs, no, not one Iranian citizen is out on any street protesting. As one might expect, no one has left their homes in Esfahan to protest or otherwise.
So, here's why the Esfahan news blurb and viral reaction this week are important; why they count as important intelligence Indications and Warnings (I&W) of things to come.
The apocalyptic regime in Iran issued a real-world edict for 1.5 million people to get up and move out of an Iranian city. These are people who, for the most part, despise the regime and distrust anything it says. The Iranian people are aware of multiple assassinations of nuclear scientists, massive explosions and mass fatalities that have occurred at IRGC-run nuclear and missile production facilities all over the country for many, many months now. Is there a single report of millions of ordinary Iranian people in the streets protesting these attacks upon the Ayatollah's regime? Well, not counting the government-paid Basij thugs, no, not one Iranian citizen is out on any street protesting. As one might expect, no one has left their homes in Esfahan to protest or otherwise.
Should any of us be so naive as to think that the Western-oriented bulk of the Iranian people do
not have access to the internet or are otherwise unaware of the leaking radiation
"rumors" at the Esfahan UCF? One high-ranking regime official
confirmed this as a real-world fact yesterday through a news report issued by the
regime-owned Fars News Agency. In another report Gholamreza Massoumi, the chief of
the Iranian Medical Emergency Agency, confirmed to Mehr News Agency, (owned by the
Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization), that several technical staff at Esfahan UCF were admitted to an Esfahan hospital
under emergency conditions exhibiting symptoms and receiving treatments
for radioactive exposure this past November due to "accidents" at the
facility. This report was further corroborated by a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report within days of the accidents.
"Massoumi referred to “accidents” at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), where yellowcake is converted into highly toxic uranium hexafluoride, saying: “People who have been in the region, for example -- Isfahan UCF -- have had some accidents for which they have been treated.”"
Then I came across a data-mining surprise. In the paragraph below the above quote there is a
reference to the aforementioned BBC Persian TV Service journalist, Mr. Kasra Naji, whose media blurb on
Wednesday sparked this current round of focus on Esfahan and its UCF. Kasra Naji reported in November 2012 that an "informed source" of his stated that "inhalation of
hexafluoride gas had caused respiratory problems for some of the
personnel at the Isfahan facility." And all Mr. Kaji can report on this week from Esfahan is the "rubbish" about air pollution in Esfahan? Forgive me from not falling off my turnip truck. The release of hexaflouride gas can be carried by prevailing winds when it is released from its containment vessels. Winds earlier this week departed from the normal northwesterly direction and came in towards the city from the southeasterly direction.
Is there something occurring in Esfahan, Iran of late? To the untrained eye, absolutely not. To the professionally-trained OSINT data miner, absolutely yes. And it may yet be related to prophecy in the near future. I have reported, you decide.
Is there something occurring in Esfahan, Iran of late? To the untrained eye, absolutely not. To the professionally-trained OSINT data miner, absolutely yes. And it may yet be related to prophecy in the near future. I have reported, you decide.
Is esfahan located near the site of ancient elam?
ReplyDeleteWell hartdawg, I had a feeling somebody was going to ask that question, and I'm really pleased that it was you!
ReplyDeleteSome folks will go to a search engine and look up Elam and look at the various maps provided. They'll accept those maps as fact, turn and respond to the same question you asked and say "No, Esfahan was not within Elam's borders - this map proves it."
Well... I say that person had better dig a whole lot deeper before giving such an answer. Here's why.
Elam's frontiers are just a little speculative of modern map drawers, as were most other national borders in those most ancient days. They were rarely fixed and often overlapped. Whomever had the most chariots and arrows usually settled the border dispute and usually ended up taking the opposing kingdom like a big fish eating a little fish. For example, one Old Elamite city called Sialk, is now known as an archaeological site called Tepe Sialk or Tel Sialk, as in mound or hill of Sialk. It is located well outside any modern map illustrating Elam's ancient borders; it is tens of miles south of the Shi'a holy city of Qom, but also tens of miles north of the modern nuclear facility located in Natanz, which is even tens of miles further north than modern Isfahan (Esfahan is proper Farsi).
Anyway, here's the map I've been using for some time as it has rivers within it, and rivers are very often mentioned in ancient texts to denote frontiers. I began using rivers to locate ancient places because, and most importantly, the Bible begins by using them to describe a location, and the word which describes the entire region, Mesopotamia, contains the root word "potam" meaning "river horse" for what we know as the Hippopotamus. I've been using this method of locating as much of ancient Elam as possible in order to have a more complete eschatological understanding of Jeremiah 49:34-39.
In this map a river denotes Elam's alleged southern, and northeastern frontiers. Yet even this map does not do justice to Elamite territories which extended well to the east into what is known as the Persian (Iranian) Plateau in a habitation known as Marashi, or even further east to Jiroft in modern Kerman Province, due north of the Straits of Hormuz, or far to the north at Tepe Sialk mentioned above. Bottom line, ancient Elam was far larger than our modern maps indicate, which brings in a lot more of modern Iranian territory into the scope of Jeremiah's prophecy - which is the basis for my interest in news stories such as this one.
We cannot say that Isfahan is outside of ancient Elam's borders. This city is within them by a very wide margin. In fact, it is accurate to a exceptional degree to say that the whole of the modern Iranian nuclear weapons program sits on top of ancient Elamite lands.
That's was a lot of words to say yes in answer to your question, but now everybody knows the research behind it.
I first saw the news article on Thursday and the prophecy concerning elam instantly jumped into my mind but wasn't positive, i was gonna bring the article to your attention but i suspected you were already in the process of commenting on it and a report would be forthcoming
ReplyDelete