In the early morning of November 26^th, US military aircraft struck a (previously identified) Pakistani border outpost resulting in 42 Pakistani Military casualties. With a total of 28 dead and 14 seriously wounded, this incident qualifies as the single most deadly cross-bor

der attack on a Pakistani military position since the beginning of the US lead war in Afghanistan.  As a result, Pakistani officials have announced the permanent closure of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan. In addition, the Pakistani government promptly ordered the departure of US persons from the Shamsi air base; which, has reportedly been utilized for the launch and recovery of UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles).

The Data

I prefer to keep things simple so after a little keyword experimentation I searched “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” and “drone” and “strikes”. I felt that this combination would best identify past cross-border incursions; even when drones aren’t involved, they’re nearly always referenced.  To have a solid data set to work with I queried from January 1^st 2009 through December 31^st 2012.

What I end up with is the chart below, which has plenty of data and a wonderful view of the momentum and negative sentiment trend lines. To provide a better view of the trending, I’ve included a second chart with the events deselected.

A thorough review of all the events supports an increase in momentum, not surprising, after a drone strike in Pakistani territory. Interestingly, there’s no direct correlation between the large spikes in negative sentiment and civilian and/or Pakistani military casualties. Subsequent searches revealed these spikes typically occurred during times in which the Pakistani government was being criticized, for one reason or another, by the US government. That’s a completely different problem set, but the following analysis was derived from the information obtained via Recorded Future, which quickly permitted me to view similar past events, reactions and outcomes.

Analysis

It’s important to understand that the Pakistani version of an outpost is substantially different from the typical US outpost and often consists of nothing more than hastily dug positions and/or dirt berms. Now this particular border outpost is well within Pakistani territory, located approximately 2.5 kilometers from the Afghanistan border, in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Area). The FATA border area is extremely volatile and has long been a point of contention between Pakistani and US Forces, with regular exchanges of small arms fire and occasional strike missions involving US military aircraft. I want to be clear when I state that it’s very common for Pakistani border forces to initiate contact with US troops. Regardless, most of these instances occur during the hours of low visibility when it’s often difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Similarly, complex tribal affiliations and the often not-so-subtle support for and intermingling with militants can further complicate matters.

What if this wasn’t a matter of confusion? To further speculate, it’s possible that a high value target was identified as having been at that location. Due to political sensitivities such an operation would have to have direct approval from the office of the POTUS and would require an extremely high degree of confidence. It’s unlikely that such a sensitive operation would ever be publicized but in my experience, it’s entirely plausible. Given the scenario and increasing political tensions however, it’s equally likely that influential elements within the FATA and/or the Pakistani government intentionally provoked a military response and ensured its escalation. This may sound like a conspiracy theory but there are certainly people out there with much to gain from the growing tensions and political turmoil between the US and Pakistani governments.

The timing of this couldn’t have been better…errrr…worse rather. There’s been an extraordinary amount of political tension between the US and Pakistani governments. The tension was steadily building but the US special operations cross-border raid deep into Pakistan targeting Usama Bin Laden accelerated an already declining relationship. The Pakistani government has openly opposed cross border drone strikes that have always, publically, been a point of contention not to mention a sometimes-political diversion. In previous instances in which border incursions resulted in high civilian casualties, the Pakistani government was quick to publically condemn such strikes. Similarly, it’s common for supply lines to be temporarily closed as a show of strength.

So what happens this time? Well… very likely the same thing that’s happened every other time a similar situation has occurred. From the Pakistani governments perspective, the response needed to be fast, appear tough and demonstrate attacks against Pakistani forces will not be tolerated. The government needs to maintain its sovereignty in the eyes of the people. Similarly, they need to appease tribal leaders as well as the militant elements that could threaten the capitals stability. On the surface, at least from my perspective, this has been achieved. NATO supply routes will be closed and perhaps for a longer period than before, but they’ll inevitably reopen until the next blatant breach of sovereignty. The US was already scheduled to depart the Shamsi air base in June of 2012, so this is more of an inconvenient show of power that at most will reduce the dwell time of the drones and whatever other aircraft are being utilized. There’s no real comparison for this scenario but I suspect this deadline will be extended but not announced. Lastly, I suspect the video from the aircraft involved will be provided as proof that US forces did not initiate contact and were in fact responding to hostile actions.

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A recent report from the IAEA on Iran’s alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons heightened speculation of over Israel making a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities (action that may seem even more real given speculation about a recent explosion at an Iranian missile site over the weekend).

However, the recency effect can sometimes be blinding in a conflict as perpetual as this one. The most current threat always seems riskier than the last one. And anyone that even casually follows this issue knows that Israel has threatened Iran before, and even allegedly sabotaged its rivals’ nuclear development through assassinations and cyber warfare.

So, in evaluating the prospects of any near term action, it’s at least worth putting the most recent media coverage of a preemptive Israeli attack in perspective. The image below shows a timeline of references from the last three years related to Israel striking Iran over nuclear weapons concerns.

Threats from the last two weeks are clearly not the first of their kind, but one of several flare ups in the ongoing security conflict for both countries. And while emotionally charged rhetoric drives media coverage today, it often fails to provide the supplemental information that similar threats from Israel took place almost exactly a year prior.

Outside of evaluating the density of media coverage during recent years, there are other ways to contextualize the significance of this most recent threat of military conflict between Israel and Iran. For example, who are the figures out there talking about this issue?

Using the same timeframe, 2009-2011, we can identify individuals discussing the combination of Iran, Israel and nuclear weapons capabilities.

Using the time slider under the network view, we can go back to May 2009 to find Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, saying that his country would not allow a nuclear Iran while months later Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said “there was no guarentee Israel would not launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities…” Separately, clear throughout are the retaliatory consequences that would accompany Israeli military action. In addition to the state military response from Iran, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal made it clear that any attack would generate support for Iran from militant groups in Gaza.

It’s also clear from the network above that the Turkish government is active in the political maneuvering with Recep Erdogen saying that any preemptive attack would be “disastrous for the entire region”. Separately, the Russian government figures prominently as do connections to the country through alleged support from scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko.

Now we have a clear indication that the issue of Israel preemptively acting against Iran is one that’s been prominent in geopolitical discussion for years, let’s shift back to evolution of the recent news. When did this issue really heat up? Well, we can see from an analysis of sources that there was the typical, scattered discussion about Israeli concerns over a nuclear Iran, at least up until October 30.

However, on October 31, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a parliamentary speech warning that Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, and suggested that “a military option should not be ruled out.” This spurred mainstream news (shown in pink) coverage on the potential for a preemptive strike even ahead of an IAEA report that came out days later suggesting Iran’s program may in fact be one designed for weaponization.

Now about two weeks past the hottest media coverage of the issue, we look out for any predictions about the days ahead. What we find is London’s Daily Mail reporting, by way of an unidentified source, that Israel would take action against Iran by the end of the year.

The Daily Mail report, so far, does no seem corroborated by other notable sources, and this issues is one of those that is notoriously difficult to dissect. How do we know what is political posturing versus concrete evidence of action? Without inside sources, we may not know, but the open source is useful in garnering perspective around inflammatory issues.

Without getting into conspiracy theory territory, what further angles would be interesting to view here? Maybe we want to examine US media sentiment about Iran leading up to Netanyahu’s speech at the end of October, or try to identify abnormalities (whether it’s unique individuals or sources) calling for a preemptive strike. We’ll return to the issue in a few weeks to see how the scenario changes.

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The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to evolve and spread from its roots in New York City to major cities around the globe. Wanting to capture the speed at which solidarity protests are emerging and the breadth of the movement, we pulled protest event data indexed from August to mid-October in Recorded Future and plotted it over time on Google Earth.

You can see the results below:

This continues our media analysis of the Occupy Wall Street, and please feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more about how Recorded Future works.

Following up our recent report on Iran’s state-run Press TV as an influential media channel covering developments in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, we wanted to see what might be driving (aside from the obvious ties to an anti-American government) their intense coverage of the movement.

We start by analyzing media activity of Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz over the last few years. What we found was a series of events suggesting considerable animosity toward the actions of big banking institutions. You’ll see some of the juiciest events and accusations below:

Mohammad Sarafraz Event Timeline - Click for Live View

So, to summarize the activity shown in the above timeline:

• Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz claims that early in December 2010 the British National Westminster Bank (NatWest) sent notification that it would be freezing London-based affiliate of Press TV accounts.
• The accounts were subsequently closed by February 2011, allegedly without any explanation or further communication.
• Sarafraz goes on to suggest that this is an action that can be directly attributed to leaked communications between the the US Department of State and Britain Foreign Office from February 2010 that imply efforts to limit the reach of Press TV.

Limited Global Media Response

While Press TV attempted to bring this issue to light through a series of reports, what did the media coverage of this interaction between Press TV and NatWest look like around the world?

Coverage of NatWest and Press TV

As you can see in the Recorded Future source map, there is almost no coverage of the NatWest and Press TV bust up outside of Iran aside from the two US and Turkish blogs, and certainly no mainstream coverage of the issue. The last identified mention comes from Press TV in June reporting that the EU responded to their complaint by saying the press outlet was not a target for restriction, but it could do nothing to interrupt the actions of a “private operator.”

Press TV Retaliating Against Big Banks

These signals suggest that Press TV’s intense coverage of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement may go beyond the conventional explanation that they’re trying to portray public unrest in the US, a primary political enemy. What this may be is a perceived opportunity for Press TV to hit back at the banking institutions it claims are being leveraged by Western political actors to silence its efforts as a media channel.

Mantech International Corporation is hosting the 1st Annual WoW Technical Conference next week on September 20, and we’re excited to announce that Recorded Future’s CEO Dr. Christopher Ahlberg will be giving a presentation entitled “Unlocking the Predictive Power in you Data”.

The conference will cover a wide variety of technologies focused on the agile implementation and smart visualization of data. The event is free to attend, and you can find the full list of presenters as well as register for individual sessions here.

Want a taste of what Dr. Ahlberg will discuss before you register? Check out how Recorded Future works for intelligence analysis.