The news today that Hezbollah's June claims of uncovering numerous CIA
agents in their ranks, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Syria, etc. is being
confirmed by "unnamed" sources among some half-named sources. And this
is making plenty of news in the US today but what of Iran? Why didn't
Iran capitalize on this more in June and since? Basically because Iran
doesn't think this was a significant victory if a victory at all.

It would seem at least some Iranians believe the US used "idiots"
intentionally to take Hezbollah and others off of the "true"
operational pathways. This is somewhat curious to me because it really
attributes a degree of strategic forethought to the US leadership. At
the same time many of these same people have berated the US for the
levels of stupidity in not understanding the Egyptian Spring, Afghani
tribal politics, or Iraq. Had anybody in this circle been tied to say,
a captured American "hiker", then it would have been a completely
different (and victorious) story. While I read and listened to the
back-and-forth in this particular chatroom two things occurred to me:

- Iranian armchair geopoliticians have their conspiracies
diametrically opposed to one another

- The Iranian "grip" on the Internet and media is more effective than I thought

It's the latter point that was more bothersome to me. Indeed it does
appear that many people inside of Iran that were familiar with tools
like Tor actually do believe, and repeat emphatically, that various
sources of software inside of Iran include countermeasures and
poisoned versions of various anonymity and anti-censorship tools. This
had come up on one of the Tor lists fairly recently and when pressed
for sample or details, nothing came of it. I also dismissed it. Now
I'm seeing/hearing it from people that should know better and again,
when pressed, they are afraid to get involved or provide evidence. And
simultaneously they had a degree of faith in this video/voice/text
chatroom? However, this time I'm having a harder time dismissing the
initial claim entirely.

Anyhow, random rambling musings of the evening. Cheers, -Ali