Politics with Marc Ambinder

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Jun 15 2009, 11:20 am by Marc Ambinder

Follow The Developments In Iran Like A CIA Analyst

I've overdone this metaphor, but I really do see the panoply of sources we have about Iran as an intelligence service to the masses.

We've got reliable Humint -- on the ground sources. We've got open-source reports from broadcast and newspaper media. We've got analysis, in the form of great aggregation by smart observers.  We lack, um, signals intelligence, but Twitter is really a form of SIGINT, isn't it?  There's plenty of misinformation out there, like rumors that Ahmadinejad is going to stage an assassination attempt, so we need to be careful about how we judge the information.  If we're a savvy analyst, we need to be careful about the weight we attach to photographs and video accounts. They're the most immediate and emotionally powerful, but they can distort our understanding of the situation, particularly of about the importance of specific developments.

To start with, here's the raw data stream from Twitter, with the hashtag of the Iranian election. Remember, this data is unfiltered. There are some nuggets surrounded by garbage.  Follow the debates: "(I hear that NPR is claiming that it is false news that Mousavi is in crowd now. IT'S NOT! Tell them pp, we have pics!)" -- that's a real tweet. How would you evaluate it if you were on the Iran desk?

Watch for disinformation. There's a temptation to equate the size of one's twitter follower universe with authority, but that's not logical.  This source seems to have good information about Tehran's universities. I'd judge it as reliable because none of the other twitterers are arguing with its conclusions, and there is some independent corroboration for some of what it has to say.

Look for patterns in geography. But don't assume that everything that has the qualities of a pattern is actually a pattern.

Don't assume. Everyone assumes that Mousavi really won. But there is reason to think that the election was very close -- and that Ahmadinejad might have actually prevailed (although the evidence appears solid that his totals were significantly inflated.)   Don't assume that Ayatollahs who appear at protests necessarily support the protesters.  Don't assume that the Khamenei speaks for the rest of the council of guardians.  Don't assume that Iran's government had a plan to contain the protests -- or has a plan for tomorrow, ten days from now, or next month.

Look for sources that disprove your thesis. Go outside the country and outside your comfort zone. See what, say, China's news agency reports about the protests.  ("Iran's defeated presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi on Monday appeared in a car at a mass rally in Tehran that has been declared "illegal" by authorities, local Press TV reported.'")

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Comments (20)

mightierthan

Thanks Marc, this is really pitch perfect. I noticed a few videos that have been presented as in the moment footage, but was actually recorded days ago, or last week.

The stream of information is so fast and immense, our serious journalists need to stand against the current and pay close attention so that the accurate story prevails.

AlchemyToday
Don't assume. Everyone assumes that Mousavi really won. But there is reason to think that the election was very close -- and that Ahmadinejad might have actually prevailed (although the evidence appears solid that his totals were significantly inflated.)

It's true that nearly everyone assumes Mousavi really won. I see no reason why it's likely the the election was actually quite close; it seems much more likely the reported results are accurate, and that Mousavi and his allies are manufacturing the appearance of fraud. This has happened recently in several elections; the most obvious parallel is Venezuela in 2004:
1. Polling immediately before election from outfits without experience in Iran showing a large Mousavi victory
2. Mousavi claims a large victory before polls close -- PSB released an exit poll a half hour before polls closed in Venezuela.
3. Claiming that suppression after the fact is equivalent to evidence of fraud; it's not. It's evidence that Iran is a brutal police state.

I think it's quite possible that the election was stolen, but the evidence presented so far is inconclusive. In fact, much of the statistical evidence has proven to be in error or completely fabricated. Obviously, an Iranian election is fundamentally unfair from the get-go, but it's important not to let that fact lead to assumptions. We don't even have the provincial results from the 2005 run-off for comparison; there's a fundamental lack of information.

Conversely, I don't see any reason to think it was actually a nail-biter with the incumbent squeaking out a victory before the margin was inflated. Some needs to explain how a good showing by Mousavi would threaten the regime more than an inevitably contested result like this. Ahmadinejad's opposition protested the 2005 election, too, and several resigned from the government. Their claims of fraud now were predictable.

Freddie

I see no reason why it's likely the the election was actually quite close; it seems much more likely the reported results are accurate, and that Mousavi and his allies are manufacturing the appearance of fraud.

The official polling showing a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad among the Kurds is about as close as you can come to proof positive that, at the very least, the numbers have been manipulated. That would be an absolutely unprecedented break with the entire history of the voting patterns of the Iranian Kurds.

AlchemyToday (Replying to: Freddie)

I'm saying it's not likely that the original results were a nail-biter; or at least that there's nothing to suggest this. It is possible that the whole thing is totally fabricated.

someguyoutthereintheether (Replying to: AlchemyToday)

Well there is the fact that they counted forty million paper ballots in a matter of hours. That's a pretty neat trick we should learn here in the states.

Cassandra Says (Replying to: someguyoutthereintheether)

I've worked as a poll clerk or scrutineer in many elections over decades where the results were in after an hour at most. In Canada, working at the polls means you miss the fun at party HQ. You can't get back there before the results are clear.

All it takes is the political will to make voting easily accessible to all of your population. Polls are many and close to home, taking in a few hundred registrants at most. It takes a half an hour tops to count and double check 450 ballots. The results are then passed up a phone tree.

Steve

I find it interesting that left leaning posts have all but called fraud on the elections. They claim the voice of reason amid the shrill conservative hacks, yet are at times guilty of the same thing. Over at The Daily Dish, if this were the only commentary an individual read, they would have to imagine blood flowing in the gutters. Andrew seems obsessed, with an almost complete disregard for authenticity.

The pictures for instance. I could have staged all those pictures quite easily, yet they are all over the web with no attempt to vet them. Andrew has even been condemning the MSM for not reporting on events, not even considering, at least in his posts, that maybe they are practicing responsible journalism and seeking reliable sources, or at least waiting for verification on the situation in Iran. I stopped reading Crooks and Liars a long time ago for this very reason, and it seems removing the Dish from my list might be wise. I simply don't have the time, the very reason I listen to nothing from Fox news, unless of course it comes up on The Daily Show.

Many see revolution in the works in Iran, but I see the possibility of manufactured hysteria.

AlchemyToday (Replying to: Steve)

If you find the original sources for the photos Sullivan's publishes, you'll also find many of groups of protesters beating individual policemen. I don't think Iran's response is in any way reasonable, but Sullivan's lack of skepticism or even honesty is a little alarming. For another example, he's linked to two posts at 538 that suggest fraud and neither of the two that call the evidence for fraud into question.

Sandy Garossino

All good analytical points. But remember this too:

1. Ayatollah Khamenei approves who can run for election & who can't.
2. Dissenters are imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes murdered.
3. Reporters are imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes murdered.
4. No freedom of the press.
5. No real freedom of speech.
6. No freedom to associate.
7. Iranian women are hounded into submission by religious fundamentalists, and they are a tiny minority of demonstrators.
8. Widespread irregularities/anomalies in election results.
9. No international observers of election

If the vote was free, the results would have more significance.

But the hundreds of thousands of people who risked life and limb in the streets of Teheran today are the answer. When has a one-third minority of voters ever garnered this kind of response?

This is not about electoral margins, this is about a people seizing their dream of freedom. For those of us who have witnessed the decades-long demise of human rights--especially for women in Iran, the western media's pre-occupation with the accuracy of the vote count is overly legalistic and utterly beside the point.

Events have overtaken the debate about election results.

Look what is happening in front of your eyes. Try for a moment to imagine these brave husbands, fathers, brothers and occasional sisters and mothers (who all witnessed or heard of horrific beatings of dissenters over the weekend) risking their own and their family members' lives by opening their front doors and walking into the street to attend an illegal rally, not knowing if anyone else has the stomach to do the same.

Anyone still stuck on whether or not the electoral results are accurate might consider taking out a dictionary and looking up the entries under 'forest' and 'trees'.

AlchemyToday (Replying to: Sandy Garossino)

I agree for the most part (and am inspired by what's going on now); however, protests of several hundred thousand in a city that even the regime admits went with a majority for Mousavi in a country of 70 million do not prove that this is anywhere near a majority movement. Protests against the Iraq war in America were larger as a fraction of the total population and were held all over the country, but still were only supported by an (unfortunately) small fraction of the country. Obviously, the stakes are higher for protesters in Iran than America. On the other hand, political apathy is more common in the States.

All of the concerns about the results can be repaired with a new election; I've heard this is what Mousavi is calling for and I hope the regime agrees and invites international monitors. If the result was really this lopsided it won't make a difference.

Sandy Garossino (Replying to: AlchemyToday)

AlchemyToday--if you think about it a bit more, you surely wouldn't compare anti-war demonstrations in the US with today's demonstration in Teheran.

No one risked their lives to go on a march in NYC or wherever the demonstrations were held. Those demonstrations were legal, not banned by the president. There was no jamming of cell-phone signals and text-messaging, blocking of the Internet, blocking of broadcast media. There were no savage beatings of dissenters by soldiers in plain view of everyone. No storming of university dormitories and murders of students living there. No (known at the time) monitoring and surveillance of dissenters and their families. No government that did all these things would have any legitimacy.

We, who live without fear in free societies, cannot take our own template and overlay it onto repressive totalitarian regimes and draw comparisons that have any relation to reality.

The point is not how the majority would vote in an election like this. The point is that no election under these conditions fairly measures the true will of the people.

celiaseal (Replying to: AlchemyToday)

It is not just one city. on the twitter that is sort of coming across. however MSM are not in those places. everything is focussing on Iran. but protests are happening in other cities. and so is the repression, and it seems harder than in Tehran, as they can get away with more as less MSM/scrutiny.

Sandy Garossino

@Steve--your skepticism is in general understandable. You are right that it would not be difficult to doctor and stage photos. Generally speaking I don't take anything at face value either.

But look at the sources here: there is BBC and Sky News footage of the crowds at today's demonstration. All the coverage from a variety of sources has a consistency. And some of the footage on some sites (eg. 2 person motorcycles with the rear person beating at the crowd with truncheons) was also mentioned in radio broadcasts by multiple sources (Canadian Broadcasting Corp, BBC, etc). Some footage I saw had Italian commentary. I.e, the twitter reports from Iranians on the ground was corroborated by multiple unrelated sources.

It isn't really credible that these reports, photos, and footage, showing remarkable consistency, are essentially inaccurate.

I would agree with Andrew about the MSM--not so much that they should report in the way he has done--his role is like that of an editorial commentator.

But over the weekend, as events were spiraling rapidly, the MSM in general showed only lukewarm interest in the story at all, even while very shocking images/footage, and reports were emerging from the street.

There was a real perception, and this moved hour by hour, that if the world news just ignored this story for another day, Ahmedinijad would be home free. Was the election a fraud? At least it is an open question, but not the important one.

Yes, you are right that the ideal situation is generally for verification before publication. But sometimes the story is as simple as this: "something big is happening in Iran--there are serious allegations of electoral irregularities, and reports of widespread violence and suppression of dissent--stay tuned." That would have been accurate reporting.

The MSM missed that this weekend. Overall they underplayed the story. And that became part of the story itself.


PatrickMeier

Thanks for this great post, Marc.

I completely agree with your SIGINT and patterns in geography approach. Ushahidi.com is actually working on a project called Swift River that will do just this. The purpose of Swift is to combine machine analysis (NLP) with human crowdsourcing to produce probability scores for the veracity of the reports coming in from Online News, Twitter and also SMS.

Here's more info:

http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/moving-forward-with-swift-river

and

http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/developing-swift-river-to-validate-crowdsourcing

All the best,
Patrick

ceolaf


Ambinder points to issues with the rigor of the analysis and research of the American media, a problem which is often even worse among new media. (Though, clearly, not always. There are some new media outlets and writers whose research and analysis is far more rigorous.)

I wish that the media and the public understood this better. The standards of scientific and academic research is so much greater than that of most journalists. There are already books out about the 2009 election, but academic papers would still be under review and dissertation and major studies would probably not even be past the analysis stage, yet.

Ambinder makes a great point here, on this issue. I hope that we can remember it more generally, as well.

Bob

Thinking about the mixture of regular journalism with Twitter, did anybody notice the apparent use os sockpuppets by HUFFPO and to a lesser extent and not till much later, FOX?

I noticed the phrase LIVE-BLOG in the text of otherwise unrelated people combined with links to YouTube that when resolved, indicated that they had been forwarded from the Huffington Post. The forward message could just be incompetence, but using the same semantic structure is a bit too convenient.

What say you Marc?

_dave_

I couldn't agree more with this post. But as well as being sceptocal, we need some proper statistical analysis: http://blogs.freshminds.co.uk/research/?p=603

IanW

Regardless of what is thought by AlchemyToday, Marty Peretz and various other persons, there is a smoking gun that the declared results in the recent Iranian election are not remotely credible.

Ignore the national results. Ignore Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Concentrate on Mehdi Karroubi and on Lorestan.

Here are the recently announced results for Lorestan in the 2009 Iranian first-round election - the one we just had. I got this copy from Nate Silver's site at www.fivethirtyeight.com

Ahmadinejad 677 829
Mousavi 219 846
Rezaee 14 290
Karroubi 44 036

OK, so we have Karroubi getting 5% of the vote in Lorestan. Lets see how he did 4 years ago ...

http://www.electoralgeography.com/new/en/countries/i/iran/2005-president-elections-iran.html

LORESTAN
===================================================================
First round Second round
Candidate Votes % Votes %
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 69,710 08.8
Mehdi Karroubi 440,247 55.5
Ali Larijani 31,169 03.9
Mohsen Mehralizadeh 6,865 00.9
Mostafa Moin 53,747 06.8
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf 70,225 08.9
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 121,130 15.3


By the way, Karroubi is from Lorestan, has his own political party, his own newspaper, was Speaker of the Parliament, came a strong third overall in the 2005 elections and may therefore fairly be assumed to have some sort of effective political machine in Lorestan, his home province.

Never the less, by the official results, in his own province, he goes from 440 247 votes in 2005 down to 44 036 votes in 2009.

It is simply not within the bonds of possibility that a regional Opposition candidate goes from 55% to 5% in his own province in just four years.

Ian Whitchurch

Cassandra Says

Why isn't it possible? Perhaps he disgraced himself.

Maybe he responded to defeat by turning screaming mobs loose on the streets. Maybe he was caught with 5,000 American twenties under his mattress.

Most posters here are taking this as an election that was a referendum of pro- or anti-Americanism. Being Americans, knowing no history, and not getting out much, they can't conceive that America's boy in such a situation could lose in a landslide.

Read some history. At the very least, read Iran's history with America on Wikipedia.


Iwww

I agree to a certain extent. I am a bit sceptical tho. Read this as weell: http://blogs.freshminds.co.uk/research/?p=603

Igor Wruppi the Pocket Bikes guy