The Washington Post reports Iran has put in place the basic infrastructure for a closed intranet, with researchers uncovering more than 10,000 devices connected to the system. Some sites, primarily government and academic, and email and other service providers are already in place. This puts Iran a step closer to disconnecting from the global internet — a move the head of Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Reza Taqipour, suggested in August could take place as early as 2013.

A nation-wide intranet would give the government new means to control access to information, especially in the event of domestic discontent:

“Having the infrastructure for a skeleton Iran-only internet in place would give the Iranian government greater power to shut off access to the Internet at times of civil unrest, such as the anti-government protests that swept Iran in 2009.

During the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak’s regime tried to stall its spread by shutting off access to the Internet — a move that largely backfired when it caused panic. Having a national network operational could help prevent a similar outcome in Iran.”

Internet access in Iran is already heavily controlled via a filtering system similar to the Great Firewall of China that blocks around 27 percent of all internet sites. Switching to an intranet approach would bring Iran’s networked communication system closer in line with those of other regimes with tightly controlled freedom of speech, including North Korea. Kwangmyong, the North Korean intranet started in 2000, is the only networked access available to the general population with the exception of the similarly closed cell phone network. Reports indicate ”only central party, national security units, and some Cabinet-level government organizations, as well as foreign diplomatic missions, joint ventures, and foreign individuals staying in Pyongyang can have ‘full but monitored’ access” to the real deal.

But Iran is not North Korea: as of 2009 Iran had 8,214,000 internet users. Millions of Iranians, many of them savvy enough to use officially outlawed virtual private networks to mask their behavior and avoid filters, are already familiar with the world wide web and use it in their daily lives for school, work and their own entertainment. Even with a domestic structure in place to mimic the global internet, it’s hard to imagine cutting off those users from a resource they have come to know and rely on would be met without resistance. But it appears that Iran is now closer to replacing the Information Super Highway with an Information Cul de Sac.

The Republican chairpersons of the House’s top security and fiscal committees wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder expressing concern that the Obama administration may release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh,” as part of a deal with Egyptian officials in the aftermath of the attacks the U.S. Embassy there and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Abdel Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

In the letter dated September 19, 2012, GOP Reps. Lamar Smith, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mike Rogers, Howard “Buck” McKeon, Peter King, Hal Rogers, Frank Wolf and Kay Granger write:

We are concerned about recent reports that the Obama administration is considering the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman. … Succumbing to the demands of a country whose citizens threaten our embassy and the Americans serving in it would send a clear message that acts of violence will be responded to with appeasement rather than strength.

The Obama administration has already said this report is false (“utter garbage” in the words of a Justice Department spokesperson). Yet these top Republicans ran with the charge anyway. So where did it come from?

It seems that the conspiracy theory started in part with a post on the Weekly Standard’s website last week, quoting a USA Today story reporting that the protests in Cairo may have been planned by a group the blind sheik formerly led.

But Glenn Beck’s website the Blaze reported on Sept. 17 that according to an anonymous source, “the transfer of the Blind Sheikh to Egypt is something that is being ‘actively considered’ by the administration as a solution to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.” The Blaze also reported DOJ’s denial and did not corroborate the anonymous source’s claim.

Right-wing blog Red State then picked up the story on Sept. 18. Yet Obama administration officials continued to say the story is false. “To my knowledge, it hasn’t come up,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on that day. On Sept. 19, a reporter pressed the issue, and Nuland was a bit more direct. “Let me say as clearly as I can, there is no plan to release the blind sheikh,” she said. “There is no plan.”

Despite the very direct denials, Ros-Lehtinen, Rogers, King and the other top House Republicans ran with the Glenn Beck-inspired accusation and issued the letter. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post picked up on the story today, reporting the Obama administration officials’ denials. Yet the right won’t let the conspiracy theory die.

“There’s no way to believe anything they say,” said documented conspiracy theorist and leading Islamophobe Andrew McCarthy. (McCarthy was the the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Abdel Rahman). “I believe there may already be a nod-and-wink agreement in place.”

ThinkProgress intern Nate Niemann contributed to this post.

Our guest blogger is Peter Yeo, Vice President of Public Policy at the United Nations Foundation and Executive Director of the Better World Campaign.

With less than two months before Election Day, not an hour will pass without pundits and bloggers weighing in on the process. While campaign season can become tiring at times and the negativity gruesome — come Election Day, we get to exercise our right to vote and that in itself is a monumental gift we must cherish.

In many nations around the globe, a free, fair and democratic election is anything but assumed. Consider South Sudan, where last year, a young man who fought for his country’s independence, saw a dream become reality when he placed his ballot into the voting box in support of granting independence to the new nation. He stood in the grueling heat, surrounded by armed guards for his safety and became part of history. He witnessed the transformation from dictatorship into democracy.

This man will remember this election for the rest of his life, and likely each one that follows it. It is a unique event, one that has been made possible only through multilateral support, and notably the United Nations and its 120,000 peacekeepers around the world. They are on the front lines of promoting peace and security every day, making democracies like South Sudan’s possible. From protecting voters as they cast their ballots, to ensuring the acceptance of democratic outcomes, U.N. Peacekeepers work side-by-side with governments to promote, and, in some cases, successfully transition to democracy.

In recent years, U.N. peacekeeping has provided crucial technical and logistical assistance in milestone elections in many countries, including not only South Sudan but also the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Afghanistan and Liberia.

Every year, the Better World Campaign along with the United Nations Foundation and United Nations Association of America (UNA-USA) ask Americans to thank these men and women who have made democratic elections possible in 100 countries over the last two decades. They not only put their lives on the line in some of the most dangerous places around the world, they also promote values that are important to Americans: human rights, strong security, and of course, democracy.

As I enter the voting booth this fall, our nation will continue its great debate and dialogue over who will lead our nation through our next four years, and I will be thankful for the ease with which this conversation occurs. I will be thinking about elections in Côte d’Ivoire, Timor-Leste and Democratic Republic of Congo that were conducted smoothly thanks to peacekeepers. I will think of those in Haiti who were supported by U.N. peacekeepers offering security and stability during the election process after the devastating earthquake. I will think of those who cast their democratic vote in South Sudan, granting them a new nation, thanks to peacekeepers, and I will be grateful for the democracies that are growing each day worldwide.

As you remind your friends and neighbors to get out the vote this election season, take a moment to also thank U.N. Peacekeepers who are getting the vote out around the world and ensuring democracy is a strong pillar of our global success. Click here to learn more about our Thank a Peacekeeper campaign.

Pentagon policy chief and Undersecretary of Defense Jim Miller told Foreign Policy’s E-Ring blog that the United States’ position and policy on Iran has not changed despite public blistering from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The timeline, from our perspective, includes the question of how long it takes to enrich, and then how long it would take to go from a certain level of enrichment to weapons grade, and other steps in that process,” Miller said. “And so, as we look at that potential timeline we certainly believe, as I said, that we have time.”

Netanyahu has been publicly pressuring the Obama administration to set so-called “red lines” that would trigger an American military response to Iran’s growing nuclear program. And the prime minister kicked his campaign into overdrive after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s publicly rebuked his request. “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu said last week in response to Clinton. And after President Obama rebuffed him on Iran red lines last week, Netanyahu took his case to the Sunday political talk shows here in the U.S.

It turns out that Netanyahu’s campaign isn’t having a lasting impression on Israelis either. The Wall Street Journal reports that a plurality of Israelis polled (41 percent verses 39 percent — and 20 percent who “don’t know”) in a new survey said their prime minister is mishandling relations with the United States on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has echoed Miller, saying last week that the United States would know if Iran decides to push for a nuclear weapon and in that case, there would be time for an appropriate response. The Obama administration has said that it takes no option off the table in its effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including military force.

But also, the Obama administration has repeatedly said that the United States is committed to Israel’s security, evidenced in economic, diplomatic and military assistance. Indeed, Israel’s leaders, including Netanyahu himself, have said this publicly. “President Obama spoke about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said last year. “He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented.” Israel’s president and defense minister have echoed that sentiment, as recently as July.

“To fully appreciate the audacity of Netanyahu’s demand for still more open-ended American security assurances,” Notre Dame fellow and professor of political science Michael C. Desch said in Foreign Affairs this week referring to Netanyahu’s “red lines” campaign, “it is crucial to recognize just how committed to Israel’s security the United States already is.”

President Obama has said that he won’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran, such as those outlined in a new bipartisan expert report released last week. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration, as Miler told Foreign Policy, to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.