Well, there has been talk of this for months, if not years.
But today, the WaPo is reporting that - according to "Western officials with knowledge of the effort" - the US and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected critical intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage attacks intended to slow down Iran’s ability to develop nukes.
Flame was developed at least 5 years ago as part of a classified effort, according to officials familiar with US cyber operations and experts who have scrutinized its code. The US-Israeli collaboration was intended to:
- slow down Iran’s nuclear program
- reduce the pressure for a conventional military attack, and
- extend the timetable for diplomacy and sanctions
The cyber-attacks augmented conventional sabotage efforts by both the US and Israel, which included inserting flawed centrifuge parts and other components into Iran’s nuclear supply chain.
According to the WaPo and its sources, Flame is a "massive piece of malware" designed to secretly map Iran’s computer networks and monitor the computers of Iranian officials, sending back a steady stream of intelligence used to enable an ongoing cyber-warfare campaign.
The collaboration involved the NSA, the CIA, and Israel’s military. It included use of the destructive software known as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear enrichment equipment. Stuxnet is the best-known cyber-weapon set loose on Iran. Its name was coined by researchers in the anti-virus industry who discovered the virus 2 years ago. Stuxnet infected a specific type of industrial controller at Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, causing almost 1,000 centrifuges to spin out of control. The damage occurred gradually, over months, and Iranian officials initially thought it was the result of incompetence.
The emerging details about Flame provide new clues about what is believed to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against a US adversary.
More at the linked article. If you can't get directly to the WaPo story via the link above, I think you can get to it via the HuffPo.
Your thoughts?
* China and others pushing ahead with nuclear plant
expansions
By Julie Gordon
TORONTO, June 15 (Reuters) - Signs that Japan is ready to restart a pair of reactors idled in the aftermath of last year's Fukushima nuclear meltdown could spark a rally by ur anium-mining shares, which have languished since the March 2011 disaster.
Recent steps to bring the first of 50 shuttered reactors back online have already bolstered long-term uranium prices, which rose last month for the first time since January 2011.
Analysts say the reactor restarts, expected to be approved on Saturday, will likely soothe equity investors, who pulled out of Cameco Corp and other uranium stocks en masse following the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
The sector's shares have remained sluggish since then, even though China, India and Russia have given every indication of pushing ahead with ambitious plans to expand their capacities to generate nuclear power.
"If Japan restarts reactors, that goes some way towards derisking nuclear power and therefore also the uranium sector," said BMO Capital Markets mining analyst Edward Sterck.
"Two reactors would just be a signal that Japan isn't abandoning nuclear power altogether," he added. "That could be a positive catalyst for uranium stocks."
Shares of Cameco, the world's largest listed pure play uranium miner, are down more than 40 percent since March 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The two reactors set to be turned back on are in Ohi, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) from the Fukushima plant.
Shares of Uranium One Inc, once the darling of the uranium space, have lost half their value, while shares of explorers such as Fission Energy Corp and UEX Corp are down more than 65 percent.
Seemingly contradictory comments by Japan's prime minister, caught between a nuclear-wary public and power-starved manufacturers, have not helped build confidence. While the long-term price has risen, the spot price remains little changed at $51 a pound and the stocks just aren't moving.
In War Against Iran, U.S. Firepower Would Vie With Guerrilla Tactics
By NATHAN HODGE
Adm. Jonathan Greenert made an important observation last fall from the tower of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis while in the Strait of Hormuz on the southern coast of Iran, the world's busiest oil-shipping lane.
The chief of naval operations was sailing in a flotilla that showed off the Navy's overwhelming power to strike at long distances: F-18 fighter jets, Tomahawk cruise missiles and deck guns able to fire a shell 15 miles.
As concerns grow over Iran's nuclear program, the U.S. is beginning to develop a plan in the event that military intervention is necessary. Reports WSJ's Nathan Hodge, Iran has an inferior military that, in many ways, could make it more dangerous.
Yet in the claustrophobic waters of the strait, which narrows to just 24 miles, Adm. Greenert noted that all that long-range firepower could potentially be countered by the Iranian patrol boats that came out to track the U.S. warships. Faced with a fight in close quarters, Adm. Greenert told a Senate panel recently, "You also may need a sawed-off shotgun."
As the U.S. and other Western powers prepare to meet Saturday in Istanbul with Iran to resume negotiations over its nuclear program, the U.S. military is sharpening its contingency planning. Advocates of peaceful engagement say economic sanctions against the Islamic regime are starting to bite, and are hopeful that Tehran will give up its uranium-enrichment program. Iran says the program is for use in electricity generation, but intelligence services say the regime is close to developing the capability of building a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration plays down the chances of a breakthrough at this meeting, the first face-to-face encounter between US. and Iranian diplomats in more than a year, saying the best outcome may be agreement for a second round.
Should all else fail and the U.S. or Israel decide to attack Iran, say analysts, they would face a miniature version of the U.S. military, circa 1975—sustained, barely, by a world-wide spare-parts bazaar. Experts say the Islamic Republic's claims of advanced weaponry—such as armed, Predator-style drones—are mere boasts.
Spotlight on Iran
Take a look at key dates in the U.S.-Iran relationship and recent international sanctions, details on major players, a map of major nuclear sites, and possible naval strategies.
Military officers and defense analysts say the U.S. could quickly overwhelm Iran's air defenses, leaving evenly spaced bomb craters, for example, on runways to disable Iranian air bases. Pinpoint airstrikes would attempt to destroy all Iran's known nuclear facilities—a goal complicated by the fact that the regime has buried some of its production sites. The Pentagon is rushing to upgrade its largest conventional bomb to better penetrate fortified underground facilities.
Naval officers believe Iran would retaliate by waging the naval equivalent of guerrilla warfare in the Persian Gulf by mining the Strait of Hormuz or swarming U.S. naval vessels with small boats.
Such threats, so-called asymmetric warfare, could prove as dangerous and unpredictable as roadside bombs in Afghanistan or Iraq, with an low-cost mine potentially crippling or sinking a billion-dollar warship.
In such a scenario, the U.S. military would face a time-consuming and often perilous effort to reopen shipping lanes to international oil traffic.
"They have stayed true to their stripes," said a senior military officer in the Middle East. "They have always taken an asymmetric approach, going back to the '80s."
Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran had among the most formidable conventional arsenals in the region, equipped with modern weaponry sold to the Shah by U.S. defense firms.
Iran's military was later battered during eight years of war with Iraq in the 1980s. Iran has since cobbled together an array of weapons—some homegrown but much acquired from China, North Korea and the former Soviet Union.
Associated Press
Plane captains stood by as a U.S. helicopter took off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Strait of Hurmuz in February.
Iran has already threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in response to tighter international sanctions. Military analysts now estimate Iran has amassed as many as 5,000 naval mines, ranging from rudimentary devices that explode on contact, to high-tech mines that, tethered to the sea floor, can identify the acoustic signature of specific types of ships and explode only under the richest targets.
Scott Truver, a mine warfare analyst, said finding and clearing Iranian mines would be a cat-and-mouse game for the Navy. Mine warfare, he said "is as tough and dangerous as the IEDs on land were. Mines are equally hard to detect, if not harder."
The U.S. Navy knows firsthand. In April 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine, which blew a hole the size of a pickup truck in the hull, and nearly sank the ship. The U.S. retaliated by attacking two Iranian oil platforms and sinking several Iranian vessels.
Among the newest threats are sophisticated torpedoes Iran acquired from Russia that can home in on the turbulence of a ship's wake and aren't easily fooled by the decoys commonly used by warships.
Military planners worry about torpedoes launched from Iran's three Russian-built Kilo submarines, as well as approximately four North Korean Yono-class mini-submarines, the class of vessel that sank a South Korean warship in 2010, killing 46 sailors.
Iran's mini-subs cannot range far or stay long under water. But in the close quarters of the Strait of Hormuz, they could be easily positioned for attacks.
Iran also is known for its fleet of hundreds of small speedboats that can carry everything from machine guns to large antiship missiles. While a single speedboat may not imperil a warship, a swarm of small boats could overwhelm a larger ship's defenses. In early 2008, a cluster of Iranian patrol boats sailed close to a convoy of U.S. warships. No shots were fired, but the provocation underscored potential dangers.
Conventional naval vessels aren't the only concern. Iran can deploy mines or even missiles from merchant vessels, or dhows. Such threats would be nearly impossible to spot in the crowded shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf.
Ten years ago, the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon held a top-secret war game to test a Persian Gulf scenario. A maverick Marine Corps general, Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, led the "Red Team," the fictional Iranian adversary. Gen. Van Riper relayed orders to his front-line troops by motorcycle messenger, so the U.S. could not hack into his networks; he sent out speedboats armed with missiles and explosives to swarm U.S. warships. After the fictional smoke cleared, more than a dozen U.S. warships were at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
That exercise, known as Millennium Challenge, was a wake-up call about the potential of asymmetric warfare. The Navy has since unveiled plans to boost the defenses of its ships in the Gulf.
Adm. Greenert said the Navy is interested in new robotic underwater vehicles that can search for mines and submarines and improved Gatling guns to counter Iranian small-boat attacks. The Navy has rushed to test and field a new anti-torpedo torpedo—a weapon that would potentially counter Iran's more sophisticated torpedoes.
The Navy recently announced plans to double its fleet of Avenger-class minesweeping ships in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. military is taking other steps. Earlier this year, the Pentagon unveiled plans to refit a transport ship as a staging platform for different kinds of missions, from countering mines to launching remotely piloted aircraft. It also could be used as a platform for launching commando operations with small patrol boats to intercept Iranian vessels, escort ships or protect oil platforms.
Beyond the waters of the Persian Gulf, military planners worry about Iran's expanding arsenal of ballistic missiles, built with North Korean cooperation and know-how. The Defense Department estimates Iran has around 1,000 short- and long-range missiles that can travel from 90 to 1,200 miles, the largest inventory in the Middle East.
The longer-range Shahab-3, which could reach Israel, has received the most attention. But Iran's shorter-range Scuds are on mobile platforms, allowing them to more easily evade detection.
Within striking distance of Iranian missiles are U.S. Army installations in Kuwait, a command post in Qatar, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
While relatively inaccurate, those missiles may have the potential to strike panic or provoke a wider war if they hit U.S. allies in the region. A retired Navy officer said the missiles don't have sophisticated targeting but could score a blind hit on a Saudi oil field, a Qatari gas production facility or a city in the United Arab Emirates. "Face it, how accurate does it need to be?" he said.
Officials with Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards threaten reprisals against any country used as a launch pad for strikes against Iran. A conflict with Iran, then, could be a real-world test for U.S. missile-defense plans. As part of a shift from Bush-era missile defense, which focused on defending U.S. territory from a long-range missile attack, the Obama administration has sought defenses against shorter-range Iranian missiles targeting U.S. troops overseas, as well as allies.
There is also a presumed terror threat. Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security could activate so-called sleeper agents for acts of sabotage or terror attacks, according to U.S. officials. Militants sponsored or trained by Iran might attack U.S. diplomatic facilities in Iraq or bases in the Middle East.
"The assumption is that there are sleeper cells all around that would be activated in some way," said retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of U.S. Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters that oversees the region.
Military professionals generally agree that U.S. forces would quickly overwhelm Iran's air defenses. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, an architect of the shock-and-awe air campaign against Saddam Hussein in 2003, said a U.S. air campaign could inflict "a sense of strategic paralysis" on Iran's air defenses by targeting command-and-control facilities, early warning radars and airfields.
But, Gen. Moseley said, Iran's air-defense system—comprised of mostly older U.S. Hawk missiles and some surface-to-air missiles of Soviet design—was "not a trivial" threat to U.S. aircraft. "Anything that shoots at you merits some respect," he said.
Military officials said Iran's forces shouldn't be entirely discounted. In the late 1970s, the Iranians "had all the latest and greatest stuff" from the U.S., said Richard Brown, a Navy fighter pilot who helped train Iranian aviators in Isfahan.
Iran maintains a fleet of Vietnam-era F-4 and F-5 jets, according to defense analysts; its helicopter fleet, which includes versions of the Chinook, the Cobra and the Huey, would look familiar to a U.S. military veteran.
It still flies the F-14 Tomcat, made popular in the movie "Top Gun." Iran was the only foreign military customer for the F-14, once a high-end U.S. fighter.
Today, many of these aircraft are close to the end of their service life. Aviation experts say Iran keeps them airworthy by cannibalizing and reverse-engineering spare parts. Iran bought nearly 80 of the F-14s. Analysts believe around 25 can still fly. By comparison, Saudi Arabia's fleet of U.S.-made F-15 fighters outnumbers Iran's F-14s by about six to one.
Veterans of the 1970s training programs in Iran doubt the Iranians have maintained enough parts to keep its U.S.-made aircraft in flying condition. Ric Morrow, a naval aviator who worked on the Iranian F-14 training program, said what remained of the Iranian air force would be "no contest" for the U.S.
The air-to-air weapons built for Iran's aircraft also may have outlived their shelf life. Steve Zaloga, a missile expert at the Teal Group, a defense consultancy, said the solid rocket motors and batteries go bad over time.
Some evidence suggests, however, that Iran operates a global procurement network to buy spare U.S. military parts. Since 2007, the U.S. Justice Department has handled more than two dozen export and embargo-related criminal prosecutions related to military spare parts destined for Iran.
Clif Burns, an export attorney at the law firm Bryan Cave in Washington, D.C., tracks such cases. He said Iran appeared to give shopping lists to independent contractors who buy parts in the world's aviation market. "The procurement effort is pretty large and enforcement alone isn't able to stop the flow of aircraft parts into Iran," he said.
—Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
In an earlier version of this article, the label for Bahrain on a map titled "The Persian Gulf Matchup" incorrectly pointed to Qatar. Bahrain is just north of Qatar on the map.
A version of this article appeared April 14, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: In War Against Iran, U.S. Firepower Would Vie With Guerrilla Tactics.
Why Did the US Invade Iraq and Afghanistan?
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.— Alexander SolzhenitsynThe master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has nothing to gain and all to lose – especially their lives.— Eugene Victor Debs
Few nations have such extensive borders or coasts as the United States. Few have borders as blessedly uncontested and unthreatened. Why, then, is the US so contemptuous of international law? Why does the US intervene in, and invade, other lands, often far from our shores, with such alarming frequency?
Why does this nation squander trillions of dollars on “security” and “defense”? Why does this nation maintain fleets and hundreds of costly military bases all over the globe? Why does this nation dissipate its treasure deploying the world’s most massive killing machine?
We may never solve these riddles unless we better understand both human nature and the nature of war. Toward that end, here I’ll pose some questions; these may imply some answers, if only fragmentary ones.
Let’s start with “human nature” (whatever that means). Why does “human nature” seem often to lead to destruction of others and of ourselves? [To really explore this issue, see Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, published in 1973 during the Viet Nam War.] Is brutality just part of who we are? Does militarism — highly organized violence — stem from our mammalian or primate pedigree? Or, as some might plausibly suggest, is it a male thing? Would women-led societies be steeped in militarism?
Who “volunteers” to be the cannon fodder and why? Don’t many enlistments – mostly male — stem from the “poverty draft” and from chauvinistic indoctrination? What impact does war have on those who serve and fight? How many come home intact? When the warriors come home, how do they and their families fare?
But maybe human nature – and men — get a bad rap. Perhaps war isn’t human or even male, but a reflex or emanation of power structures. Such structures aren’t persons: most humans have no say in the power structures’ callous indifference to life. These structures – mostly regimes and corporations — tend to be machines with connected but blindered parts.
Each nut and bolt plays its little role often oblivious to its contribution to the machine’s malign functioning. Usually those who have risen to positions of oversight and command internalize the machine’s inhuman dynamics. Consciously or not, malevolently or not, these leaders tend to make policy detrimental to the 99%. The logic of their positions calls for achieving short-term gains with little consideration of anyone out of sight, whether socially, geographically or generationally.
More Questions
Historically, did militarism loom as large as it has over the past century? Was human governance more — or less — warlike before the rise of agriculture millennia ago and before the rise of industrialism two or three centuries ago? Was the power structure as warlike before capitalism turned greed into an MBA program and a science?
On a finite planet, does exponentially rising population lead to exponentially rising aggression? Along with population pressure comes two quantitatively and qualitatively distinct types of consumption – that needed for human survival (essential consumption) and that merely sought for status, comfort or self-indulgence (excessive consumption).
Excessive consumption is at least an order of magnitude greater than essential consumption. But those consuming little more than what is necessary greatly outnumber we who consume far too much. Together both the haves and the have-nots – the over-developed and the not-so-developed nations — wreak havoc on the planet and severely tax its habitats.
Our dependence on increasingly scarce resources (especially fossil fuel) spurs the national and imperial rivalries that intensify militarism. [See Michael T. Klare’s excellent Resource Wars.] And note: within the global power structure much of the world’s limited resources are devoured maintaining the war machine(s). War, itself, is a major engine of ecological mayhem.
Can war – especially offensive or “pre-emptive” war – ever be morally justified? When has resorting to violence, rather than negotiation ever served broad human interests? Doesn’t violence usually or always generate more violence? Doesn’t war corrupt? (What, for example, has become of the billions of dollars the Pentagon can’t account for?)
War and Empire
Who benefits from the organized violence of war? War is enormously profitable for US “defense” industries. These industries shape US governance and foreign policy. This is true whether the target was Viet Nam or the Pentagon’s current land and air wars elsewhere in Asia.
Despite the recent and projected drawdown of troops, will the US imperium ever voluntarily loosen its grip – all those bases! — on regions that corporations and the Pentagon deem strategic? Or must we wait until, like the Soviet empire, impending bankruptcy forces our full withdrawal and demilitarization?
Without designated “bad guys,” corporate war profiteering would wither. Negotiation risks leading to a peace settlement; peace is the enemy of the war industry. The war industry, through lobbying and by financing election campaigns, buys and sells Congressional representatives. These kept men and women, in cahoots with the Pentagon and with the Executive branch, keep the war pot boiling.
Just look at all the manufactured frenzy about Iran – as if modern Iran has ever invaded its neighbors; as if Iran itself wasn’t totally flanked by saber-rattling nuclear powers; as if Iran had a fraction of the air (or land or sea) power of the US and Israel.
Nationalism and Patriotism
What is the role of nationalism and patriotism – each a type of tribalism, each promoted by imperialism — in fostering war? Considering how many of the victims are non-white or Islamic, what role does white racism and “Christianity” play in the mindsets that make mass killing so casual?
By refusing to close Guantanamo and by authorizing the Reaper drone’s extrajudicial and civilian killings, Congress and the Pentagon assure that whole swaths of the Middle East and Central Asia will long remain hostile to the US. Since US contempt for the “other” isn’t a policy calculated to “win hearts and minds”; i.e., to quell hostilities, what is it calculated to do?
We can imagine why the 1% don’t embrace nonviolence. But why do the insights of prophets like Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. elude so many of the 99%? Is it “false consciousness”; how has Debs’ subject class come to be so misled and dumbed down? Is critical thinking so absent from school curricula and university courses? Are our minds so colonized and compartmentalized that we can’t see the consequences of our actions?
To mobilize the US population to support its interventions and invasions, the Bush administration eagerly seized on 9/11 as a pretext for its phony “war on terrorism.” I say “phony” because many questions about 9/11 are studiously avoided. For example, the official 9/11 commission failed to investigate leads suggesting that elements of the Bush administration, despite pointed warnings, chose not to take measures preventing that holocaust. [For a quick video on some of the gaps in the official narrative, see www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/].
Although “terrorism” is incessantly invoked by politicians and the corporate media, defining the word seems to be taboo. Surely such a taboo will persist as long as the Pentagon – with its gunships, napalm, Reaper drones, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, hellfire missiles, cruise missiles, etc., etc. – keeps raining terror on poorly defended peoples.
Weakness or Strength?
Do militarism and the imposition of a surveillance state make a nation safe and strong — or vulnerable and weak? The “war on terrorism,” it turns out, has been a wonderful device for stifling dissent and ratcheting up surveillance and social control here in the US — witness the Patriot Acts and the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act. Witness the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir and the calculated intimidation of Muslims here in Syracuse – a pattern repeated across the country.
Why do we refuse to see what the Pentagon does, not only over there, but here? The trillions squandered on US land and air wars provide the rationale for class-targeted domestic budget cuts. Such cuts help heighten the privilege precious to the 1%, and to those who curry their favor or aspire to join their ranks.
Such cuts decimate the safety nets that reduce human despair and help assure domestic tranquility. The ensuing social discord is then used to justify the further militarization of our police. With that domestic militarization the US itself insidiously becomes an occupied territory. Unlike people of color, middle class white folk seem blithefully unaware of the process. As the middle class shrivels that ignorance will diminish.
And can’t we see our complicity in our own oppression? Don’t we contribute to militarism through the federal taxes we pay – about half of which goes to the Pentagon? The Pentagon, of course, then funnels much of this swag to its corporate cronies.
Are we so caught up in personal debt, are our lifestyles too snared in addiction, distraction and co-optation, that we can’t think straight? Are we so snared that our hearts have gone AWOL?
Don’t we give a damn that our children are inheriting an increasingly depleted and dangerous world? Or that our nation’s much vaunted democracy – like our proud Judeo-Christianity – risks becoming a soulless sham.…
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