Iran’s confirmation that the computers of a number of their officials have been attacked by a new virus will give further ammunition to those who argue that the nuclear threat from the Islamist regime can be neutered by intelligence coups and technology. Like the Stuxnet virus which supposedly flummoxed Iran’s scientists last year, the new Flame worm may cause some havoc in Tehran and the nuclear facilities scattered around the country. And it will give Western and Israeli intelligence agencies and government officials a chance to crow about their capabilities, much as Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon did today.
But even if this is Israel’s handiwork and the damage it does is greater than then the mere temporary inconvenience wrought by Stuxnet, no one should be fooled into thinking a virus will ultimately stop Iran’s nuclear program if the regime is determined to persist in its goal. Any technological attack will spawn a defense and a counter-attack. Though Flame may give Israel and/or the West a temporary advantage in the cyber war being conducted with Iran, it cannot by itself or even in combination with other covert activities such as assassinations, solve the problem. That is only possible by diplomacy or force.
Israel’s public skepticism about the P5+1 talks being conducted by the West with Iran about its nuclear ambitions is well-founded. Even though the United States and its European, Russian and Chinese allies deserve credit for not folding completely during the second round of talks last week in Baghdad, the Iranians continue to refine uranium and to get closer to a stockpile that could create a bomb. Iran has every expectation that if it hangs tough, either President Obama or the European Union will crack sometime this summer and abandon plans for an oil embargo in exchange for an inadequate deal that would preserve Tehran’s nuclear program.
Unlike the West’s faltering diplomacy, a course of action that accomplishes nothing except to prevent Israel from attacking Iran, it must be conceded that computer viruses at least have the virtue of slowing the regime’s nuclear progress, though how much, we don’t know. But we do know that for all of the hoopla about Stuxnet, such delays were temporary and strategically insignificant. We can hope for better from Flame, but the odds are it will be just a pinprick, not a decisive stroke. As much as such schemes allow us hope for a solution short of armed conflict, unless a miracle happens and diplomacy succeeds, sooner or later the West and Israel will be faced with a choice between force and living with a nuclear Iran. Like Stuxnet, Flame may put off that day, but it cannot prevent it from happening.
Only four countries had the technical know-how to develop the Flame virus: "Israel, the U.S., China and Russia." nSince the virus was obviously intended for Iran, we can eliminate its friends China and Russia. nThis leaves only Israel and us. nHaving thoroughly demonized Iran, anything we do to it has become fair game. nBut there is nothing fair or right about taking another country's data. Certainly we would not want China or Russia taking our data and spreading it to 80 separate servers. nAs a leader of the world community aspiring for governance through universal fairness, we can no longer afford to follow the beaten path of expediency chosen by Israel. Doing so will not only deprive us of our moral authority, but will also squander our unique opportunity to fashion a more just and fair world. n
Our moral authority? We already have the moral authority–there is NO moral equivalency between the government of Iran run by the theocrats and enforced by the IRGC, and the democracies of the USA and Israel. Whatever Israel and/or the USA do to prevent Iran from having deliverable nuclear capability is moral and ethical. Islamism is the ideological descendant of Nazism (Shiite or Sunni–no distinction as far as I'm concerned) and, if history is any guide, we cannot allow a clearly repulsive fascist ideology the capability for mass destruction.
George Kafantaris. Clearly publicizing the deeds and statements of the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, who has repeatedly threatened to wipe another UN member country off the map, constitutes "demonization." And certainly the risk of war, even nuclear war or nuclear obliteration, does not justify the target country in stealing the agressor's data, any more than it would justify writing something uncomplimentary on the agressor's facebook account. n nWhat a world you must live in, sir. How's that hope and change working for you?
The P5/1 diplomacy won't deter an Israeli attack if Israel decides that the diplomacy is going nowhere, a preemptive attack is doable and has a good chance of meeting its goals without disastrous blowback, and the time is opportune. Even assuming for the sake of argument that the dilatory process, influenced by Russian opportunistic ambivalence and Obama's ideology/fears/prior contractual obligations to the Soviets (just throwing that out for grins), will inevitably travel the route from concession to capitulation–Israel may yet decide that cyberwarfare and cyber-deterrence is of equal value to a conventional military attack–particularly as it progressively degrades an installed base that is also made progressively transparent to Israeli monitoring. And that transparency disappears with a militarily forced Iranian reset from zero. Cyberwarfare is still warfare and stuff like Flame doesn't get introduced into closed Iranian facilities by magic or prayer. Israel already has windows into what the Iranians are doing operationally and those windows are getting wider. So the general Spenglerian failure of the West, as evidenced by its cravenly hopeful "negotiation" default with Iran or the disconnected blather about diplomacy as the Alawites go full-in on writing their death sentences in Sunni-majority Syria is not necessarily a decisive factor in forcing Israel to preempt through conventional military assets. The Iranians are getting publicly freaked and the Flame and other cyberwar/sabotage initiatives could seriously delay progress or collectively serve as deterrence–as the Iranians cannot hope to surprise Israel with nuke assembly or delivery at a certain level of monitoring.
It wasn't a virus. It was malware that enabled the user to spy. It didn't destroy anything.
[cont'd] "Extinguishing the Jewish state has been a central tenet of the Iranian regime since its founding by the Ayatollah Khomeini more than three decades ago. “Ever since coming to this revolution,” Khomeini declared in a televised speech not long before his death, “one of our major points has been that Israel must be destroyed.” Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been equally clear. Last February, he described Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must be “cut.” Iran’s military leaders frequently echo such calls. “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel,” the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, less than two weeks ago. And the unsubtle cry of “Death to Israel” is a regular incantation at Friday prayers. These are not empty threats or nebulous hopes, but murderous exhortations backed up by concrete policies." n n n n