I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Israeli Cyberwar On Iran?
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Reuters today filed a very interesting report on the possibility of Israel launching a covert cyberwar on Iran, where they would be able to target strategic sites by infecting the computers at such locations with malware.
Some sites might have computers linked to a larger national network (perhaps an oil pipeline), while other more secretive sites (like a nuclear plant) would have no ties to any outside networks and would therefore be harder to infect. But, the report indicates that the Israelis are quite capable of infiltrating those sites using some basic methods, such as an infected USB stick being brought in by either an unknowing employee or even a willing agent.
In fact, although Israel hasn’t taken any responsibility for it, there appears to have been an incident last year where Iran captured and executed one of their own citizens and accused him of “spying for Israel” and for supplying infected equipment which caused “irreversible damage”.
As I posted recently, Peter Berkowitz wrote an exceptionally detailed and informed article on Israel’s considerations for a raid on Iran in the latest Weekly Standard, including details of possible outcomes and how Israel might be preparing for them, and political and military costs. In it, he alludes to this exact sort of warfare, indicating that it has already been underway for some time now. He writes:
Short of a full-scale military strike, Israel also has a clandestine option involving the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, sabotage of Iranian facilities, and targeted killings. Nor would this represent a new policy. As [head of research and development in the Israel Defense Forces and the ministry of defense, Air Force Major General Isaac] Ben-Israel, choosing his words carefully, pointed out, Israeli national security experts have been warning that Iran was 5 years away from producing a nuclear weapon for the last 20. Why do you suppose, he asked, it has taken Iran so long? After all, he observed, 60 years ago in the middle of World War II, it took the United States only a few years to produce the first atomic bomb, and no country that has set its mind to it has taken more than 5 to 10 years. Leaving me to draw the proper inference, Ben-Israel emphasized that clandestine operations can delay but will not destroy Iran’s nuclear program. And the experts agree that time is running out: Absent dramatic action–by the United States, the international community, Israel, or some combination–Iran is on track to join the nuclear club sometime between 2011 and 2014.
As you can see from his analysis, though, this type of warfare is certainly helpful in delaying the Iranians from reaching their goal, but in all likelihood will not be enough to prevent them from reaching their goal.
Therefore, while this is certainly a necessary tactic, the idea of an outright attack (a la Osirak, but larger-scale) is still very much in play.