Iran Focus: Iran has been recruiting destitute women to pose as dissident bloggers, according to confidential information obtained from inside Iran’s security forces and the so-called Cyber Army. Iran Focus, 11 Jan. – Iran has been recruiting destitute and homeless women by paying them meager sums to pose as dissident bloggers and activists on the internet, according to confidential information obtained from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s so-called Cyber Army.
These women are being rounded up in different cities and taken to centers, where Iran’s so-called Cyber Army operatives teach them the use of internet to enable them to establish contact with anti-government activists through Facebook, twitter and other social media outlets. The goal is to identify opposition cells, writers and bloggers inside and outside the country and lure them into a network totally controlled and monitored by the intelligence services.
Iran’s Cyber Army Chief is in charge of this project.
In another development, Iran has sent some 6,000 members of the IRGC’s paramilitary Bassij force to European countries posing as merchants and industrialists to engage in pro-Tehran propaganda. At the same time, all Iranian agents operating in Europe have been summoned to embassies, especially in Nordic countries, to be briefed on a concerted campaign leading up to the Presidential elections scheduled for mid-June.
