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Foreign Perspectives community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/ Foreign Military Studies Office Volume 8 Issue #2 OEWATCH February 2018 FOREIGN NEWS & PERSPECTIVES OF THE OPERATIONAL ENVIRONMENT IRAN: FOREIGN PERSPECTIVES PERSPECTIVES ON IRAN LATIN AMERICA RUSSIA, UKRAINE 3 Iran: Revolutionary Guard Crowdsourcing Protestor 30 Big Colombian Election Coming 47 Russian General Staff’s Military Thought on “Color Revolutions” Identification 31 Venezuelan Rebel Killed and the Changing Nature of War 4 Iran: Was America Behind Uprising? 31 ELN Wants What the FARC Has 48 Multiple Drones Attack Russian Airbase in Syria 5 Iran: Lifting the Ban on Instagram was Illegal 32 The Dark Web Plagues Latin America and the Caribbean 50 Russia to Focus on Munitions, Instead of Platform 6 Iranian Authorities Block Internet Access to Citizens Amid 33 ISIS Recruitment Represents Growing Trend in Trinidad and Development Protests Tobago 51 Heavy MLRS Being Added to Russian Division and Brigades 7 Turkish Perspectives on Iran 34 Bitcoin as a Response to Hyperinflation in Venezuela? 53 Russian Ground Forces Divisions Upgrading Air Defense 8 The Sino-Iranian Relationship: Stronger than Ever 35 Why Panga Vessels Continue to Thrive in the Drug Capabilities 9 China Limits Internet Exposure to Iran Protests Trafficking World 55 New Naval System Will Be Capable of Launching Air, Shipping, 9 Indonesian Perspectives on the Iran Protests 36 Colombian Cartels and the Importance of Cocaine and Ground Attack Missiles 10 A Malaysian Perspective on US-Iran Relations Coordinators 57 Russia Increasing Military Capabilities in the Far East 11 India’s Interest in Stability in Iran 37 Cuba Responds to Allegations of “Sonic Strike” at US 58 Russian Anti-Satellite Weapons Systems 12 Iran Approaches the Syria-Jordan Border Embassy Using Online Forum 59 Russia’s New ‘Dragonfly’ UAV 13 Saudi-Iran Tensions Seen in Nigerian Crackdown on Shia 60 Altering Lunar History Group 61 Shoygu’s Fifth Year Report Card ASIA-PACIFIC 62 Electronic Tokens to Track Soldiers 38 China’s Military Base in Djibouti: Features and Motivations 63 Spetsnaz Minelaying Detachments 39 The Chinese Navy’s Top Five Accomplishments in 2017 MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA 64 Thinning the Ranks 14 Understanding Turkey’s Air and Missile Defense Deals 40 China’s Strategic Advantage in Selling Cheap Submarines 65 Commercial ATV Headed to Arctic Forces 16 Turkey to Establish S-400 Missile Defense Regiment 41 Why is China the Champion, and not India? 66 Russian UAV Regiment Stationed in the Arctic Command 42 China’s “Physicals for All” Program in Xinjiang 67 Russia Tests New ICBM Component in Arctic 17 Egypt-Russia Strategic Cooperation Goes Nuclear 68 “The Cold War Will Look like Child’s Play Compared to New US 19 ISIS Goes Underground… in the Desert Sanctions” 21 The ISIS Economy: Will Losing Territory Cripple Islamic CAUCASUS, CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA 43 “Borderization” of Occupied Georgian Territory 69 Crypto-Detour around Anti-Russian Sanctions State? 44 A Review of Kazakhstan’s Armed Forces in 2017 70 Russian Digital Sovereignty Effort Led by FSB 45 Afghanistan’s Cooperation with the SCO 71 Why the Russian Government Needs the Cryptoruble AFRICA 46 Legitimizing Aina Gamzatova 72 Cryptoruble Rejected in Favor of a Supranational 23 Somalia: Anger at AMISOM following al-Shabaab Attacks Cryptocurrency 24 ISIS Grows in the Sahel 25 Cameroon: Angry Anglophones, Government Forces, and a Deteriorating Situation 26 Counterinsurgency in the Sahel 27 Hiding Terrorist Funding Flows with Mobile Money Systems 28 Somaliland: Peaceful Elections in an Unrecognized Country 29 Senegal Stops Terrorist Attacks approved for public release; distribution is unlimited The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is part of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command G-2, whose mission is to Understand, Describe, Deliver, and OEWATCH Assess the conditions of the Operational Foreign News & Perspectives Environment. For over 30 years, FMSO of the Operational Environment has conducted open source research Volume 8 | Issue 2 February | 2018 on foreign perspectives of defense and security issues, emphasizing those topics that are understudied or unconsidered. Regional Analysts and Operational Environment Watch Expert Contributors provides translated selections and commentary from a diverse range Middle East, North Africa Robert Bunker Ludovico Carlino of foreign media that our analysts Alma Keshavarz and expert contributors believe will Karen Kaya give security professionals an added Michael Rubin Lucas Winter dimension to their critical thinking Jacob Zenn about the Operational Environment. Africa Robert Feldman Jacob Zenn The views expressed in each article are those of the author and do not represent the official policy or Latin America Geoff Demarest position of the Department of the Army, Department Brenda Fiegel of Defense, or the US Government. Release of this Zach Kelsay information does not imply any commitment or intent on the part of the US Government to provide any Asia-Pacific John Fei additional information on any topic presented herein. Cindy Hurst Spencer Shanks The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute Jacob Zenn endorsement by the US Army of the referenced site or the information, products, or services contained Caucasus, therein. Users should exercise caution in accessing Central and South Asia Matthew Stein hyperlinks. The Operational Environment Watch is archived Russia, Ukraine Chuck Bartles and available at: https://community.apan.org/wg/ Dodge Billingsley tradoc-g2/fmso/. Ray Finch Les Grau Mica Hall Kaitlyn Johnson Boris Vainer Tom Wilhelm ON THE COVER: Editor-in-Chief Tom Wilhelm Flag of Iran. Editor Karen Kaya Source: By Various [Public domain, Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Ali Khamenei with the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij - Mashhad, Design Editor Lucas Winter 1999. Source:By Khamenei.ir (http://farsi.khamenei.ir/photo-album?id=23801) [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. PERSPECTIVES ON IRAN Iran: Revolutionary Guard Crowdsourcing Protestor Identification OE Watch Commentary: The protests which erupted on 28 December in “#Iran_is_not_Syria.” Mashhad and spread across Iran caught security forces by surprise. While protestors used social media to rally each other and spread word of events in Source: “Tasaviri Sardesteh-haye Aghteshashgeran-e other cities, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its associated Tehran (Photos of the Agitators of the Unrest in Tehran),” media turned to social media to crowdsource identification of protest leaders. @Tasnimnews_Fa, 3 January 2018. https://twitter.com/ Tasnimnews_Fa/status/948507708684161024 In the accompanying highlighted tweet from the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim, the news agency is asking its twitter followers to identify suspects. Other Pictures of the Agitators IRGC-related websites like Gerdab.ir also engaged in similar campaigns to Pictures of the Agitators of the Unrest in Tehran. Do you identify protestors. While the Iranian government has gradually improved know them? its facial recognition capabilities, efforts to mobilize regime supporters to #Uprising_against_Chaos inform on other Iranians suggests that holes still exist in Iranian security force capabilities. It also suggests that the government seeks to create a dynamic #Flag_of _Iran by which Iranians must prove themselves and their loyalty by informing on #Trump others. Such crowdsourcing also highlights a disincentive for the Iranian #The_Overthrow government to completely close off access to social media platforms. #National_Turmoil The tweet’s associated hashtags—all translated from the original Persian— #New_ Sedition give insight into how the regime seeks both to rally Iranian nationalism to #We_must_be_Alert the “#Flag_of_Iran” and to spin the protests as an external plot. They also demonstrate how the IRGC uses the narrative of chaos in Syria to justify #Iran_is_not_Syria strict security and crack down on demands for reform or democracy. End OE Watch Commentary (Rubin) The Official Seal of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Source: By MrInfo2012 - This vector image was created with Inkscape. (Own work), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeal_of_the_Army_of_the_Guardians_of_the_Islamic_Revolution.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0. OE Watch | February 2018 3 PERSPECTIVES ON IRAN Iran: Was America Behind Uprising? OE Watch Commentary: Conspiracy theories run deep in Iranian society. Iranian television shows poke fun at the Iranian penchant for conspiracy and Encyclopedia Iranica, the leading international academic reference about Iran, dedicates an entry to the history of conspiracy theories in Iran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s speeches regularly reference alleged American, Israeli, Saudi or British plots. Therefore, it is not surprising that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would blame the protests which began on 28 December on foreign governments, external enemies, and conspirators. As the first accompanying tweet from Khamenei’s twitter feed shows, Khamenei points to “Americans and Zionists” with the “money for these asinine governments [being] Persian Gulf [Arab state] money.” What is surprising, however, is that other regime officials publicly denied any external hand in the unrest. As the second passage demonstrates, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a parliamentarian and political ally of former President Mohammad Khatami, tweeted that there was no evidence of “external stewardship” of the protests. Within a week, his tweet had
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