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Stuxnet Allegedly Loaded By Iranian Double Agents
First time accepted submitter rainbo writes "According to a report from ISSSource, a saboteur who was likely a member of an Iranian dissident group loaded the Stuxnet virus on to a flash drive and infected machines at the Natanz nuclear facility. Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said that an unspecified amount of 'nuclear spies' were arrested on ties to this attack. Some officials believe these spies belonged to Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is used as the assassination arm of the Israeli Mossad."
The US and Israel aren't the only countries that would rather Iran not be a nuclear power.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Saudi Arabia is probably as violently opposed to the Iranian's getting nukes as the Israelis. The Israelis have a large nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to Iran. The Saudi's don't have any deterrent of their own and would have to rely on the U.S. which could prove to be a fickle ally in a crisis, just ask Mubarak in Egypt.
The Iranians are Shia Muslims, the Saudis are Sunnis, the two hate each other with the passion you often find in long running sectarian conflicts.
There is a fair chance that if the Iranians get nukes the Saudi's will probably start developing their own to try to maintain the balance of power between Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East. The Saudi's getting nukes will probably not sit well with the Israelis.
The Middle East will become either more stable thanks to three way MAD or very, very dangerous, thanks to three fanatically religious countries, who really hate each other, are very close together and will have lots of apocalyptic weapons.
@de_machina
The answer to this question will become obvious if Iran gets nukes. If Iran goes nuclear, expect a number of Middle East countries to start taking steps to acquire nuclear weapons themselves, as a deterent to a nuclear Iran. These will be the same counties that didn't have an issue with not having nuclear weapons when Isreal was the only country in the region to have them.
MEK is an organization of militant Islamic, Iranian leftists guerrillas. There are certainly a reasonable number of conspiracy nuts taking a break from their '9/11 was a Zionist Conspiracy using planted charges supplied by aliens' tirades who claim an association between them and Israel. But describing them as the assassination arm of Mossad seems to be a stretch based on the current available facts. If there's a clear tie - is there somewhere we can read about it? The conspiracy bloggers make my head hurt.
It is believed that Iran is behind Hezbollah which has been attacking Israel for years... there were also the recent attempted killing of embassy staff by what appears to be the Iranians.
Don't let semantics get in your war, a proxy war is still a war, despite not having actual classical armys on the ground.
That being said, I am not excusing Israel or America's actions in this situation, but Religious fanatics don't always foliow logic.
The Iranian people themselves are freaking awesome, I just can't stand their government.... actually, I can't stand most governments.
By all accounts, sectarian war is also how Saddam Hussein took power and ran his regime. Saddam was a Sunni, as were approximately 20% of the Iraqi population; meanwhile, he gassed the Kurds and engaged in major terror operations against the Shi'a.
Arab society runs roughly thus: (sorry I can't paste the arabic script, Slashdot doesn't like it much):
Me against my brothers until a cousin comes;
Me and my brothers against my cousins until a neighbor comes;
Me and my brother and my cousins against the neighbor until a foreigner comes;
all of us against the foreigners.
And when was the last time Iran attacked some other country?
Iranian agents regular attack people around the world, such as in Argentina: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_AMIA_bombing
Iran has cannon fodder to do their dirty work (like Hizbullah).
and civilians killed in the process are no problem
In Iran's case, civilians killed in the process is the desired result.
As a geek myself, there are times I can't help but feel disgusted at the way they treat my fellow geeks
Who were the ones doing all the new inventions?
The Geeks
Who were the ones reaping the benefits of the new inventions?
The Investors
On the other hand, whenever things go wrong, who do they blame?
The investors?
Don't be silly, nobody will blame those poor investors who have lost their life-savings
They will of course blame the GEEKS for the failings
Like in this Iranian case
Who invented the nuclear thingy? Geeks
Who use this nuclear thing to blackmail the world? The Politicians
Who invented the Stuxnet virus?
The Geeks
But who order the Geeks to invent the Stuxnet virus?
The Politicians
Now, about those "Nuclear Spies" the Iranians rounded up - and we can assume very brutal torture, killing, etc included - because of the Stuxnet virus?
The Politicians? No, nobody would touch the politicians
They rounded up and torture the Geeks
It's the Geeks who are being blamed for everything and anything when things gone south, but yet, never get to reap any benefit when things go north, way up north !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm sorry. You're correct right up to your last sentence where you state that Israel is a "fanatically religious country". You're making intelligent arguments look bad.
Israel has a population of 25% non-Jewish. They are run by a secular democratically-elected government with an electorate selection skewed "against" the religious majority. They are a very small country which has not only not expanded it's borders through military might since its founding but shrunk it's borders. Their cities are under a near-constant rocket barrage and regularly (more regularly than earthquakes in California) have suicide bombers in their major cities which hold the Sharia brand of Islam in high esteem (the so-called 'radical Islamists').
They are a nuclear power. they have a conventional military which could take out the combined military force of several other countries in the region and still hold reserves - without touching the nuclear stockpile.
Calling Israel a 'religious extremist' country has about as much stock in reality as calling Twighlight an epic masterpiece of Kermit the Frog one of the best philosophers of the 18th century.
Maybe.
The Iwo Jima and Okinawa invasions were planned as part of the same campaign. The goal was the airfields within 500 miles of the mainland. Our capture of Guam, Saipan, the Marianas and Tinian gave us long-range heavy bomber capability to carpet bomb Japanese factories, but the B-24s and B-29s had a rough time of it. It was a long flight: 3000 miles round trip, about 16 hours. Tokyo was right at the edge of the B-29s range, so a lot of planes made it back on fumes, or, if they took shrapnel through a fuel line, ditched in the middle of nowhere*. Plus, when they got over Japan, they had to contend with the Japanese air force all by themselves. They had no fighter escorts - the longest range U.S. fighter, the P47-N, only had a range of about 1800 miles (that's with drop tanks). The bomber wings were taking pretty high casualties, losing about 5% of all bombers sent out on each sortie, plus lots of dead gunners. We needed to have airfields much closer so we could have emergency landing places for the B-29s, SAR aircraft for downed crews, and those lovely fighter escorts. Air superiority wins wars, so the U.S. needed to capture islands much closer to the mainland.
Iwo Jima jumped off first (19 February – 26 March 1945). Iwo Jima had three airfields, but it's only 8 square miles, not a lot of room, and no deep anchorage ports for the Navy. Okinawa (1 April – 21 June 1945) had four existing airfields, plus it's 500 sq. mi. Bonus: it's in the Sea of Japan. This allowed us to attack from two directions and also support some of the Allied forces in China.
I don't think we realized how costly it was going to be to take the island. Plus we really REALLY wanted/needed those airfields. We thought we had figured out how to deal with the Japanese tunnel problem: flame tanks (M4A3R3 Zippo). We captured two of the four airbases within hours, and within a couple of days we held half of the island. It was taking the rest that was the problem.
Another aspect to this is the whole world was getting weird while this was going on. We invaded Okinawa Island on April 1. USSR entered the war against Japan on April 6. President Roosevelt died on April 12. Ernie Pyle, the famous and well-loved war correspondent, was killed on April 18th while accompanying a mop-up operation on one of the outlying Okinawan islands. Germany surrendered on May 8, and we hoped Japan might be demoralized and surrender as well. That didn't happen. We needed to end the war, fast. Momentum was on our side, morale was on our side. We had a new, 'unknown' president (Truman). The U.S. was running out of creative ways to raise money. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt had already met in Yalta to carve up post-war Germany. The world was changing, a new order was arising. We were already looking beyond, and realized that we needed to be done with this whole thing.
* I highly recommend "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. True story about a former U.S. Olympic runner who became a B-24 bombardier. Their plane developed serious mechanical problems on a long-range search mission. They ditched in the middle of the ocean, survived in a life raft for 47 days, then were captured by the Japanese and sent to one of the worst POW camps till the end of the war. Amazing story.