Foreign Policy In Focus

At Foreign Affairs, three members of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, including the president, Andrew Krepinevich (the author, incidentally, of an eye-opening book: 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century), present rationales for a U.S. attack on Iran. In an essay titled Why Obama Should Take Out Iran's Nuclear Program (and subheaded "The Case for Striking Before It's Too Late"), they mention the obvious:

If Iran became a nuclear power and the United States reacted with a policy of containment, nuclear weapons would only be more appealing as the ultimate deterrent to outside intervention. … Iran's rivals for regional dominance, such as Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, might seek their own nuclear devices to counterbalance Tehran.

But first they write that

… the Obama administration has downplayed the findings of the new IAEA report, suggesting that a change in U.S. policy [towards Iran] is unlikely. Yet this view underestimates the challenges that the United States would confront once Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

By "acquired," one assumes the authors mean that Iran has gone beyond developing the capability to actually building nuclear weapons. In which case

… the nuclear balance between these two antagonists would be unstable. Because of the significant disparity in the sizes of their respective arsenals (Iran would have a handful of warheads compared to Israel's estimated 100-200), both sides would have huge incentives to strike first in the event of a crisis. Israel would likely believe that it had only a short period during which it could launch a nuclear attack that would wipe out most, if not all, of Iran's weapons and much of its nuclear infrastructure without Tehran being able to retaliate. … Decision-makers would be under tremendous pressure to act quickly.

In fact, the article isn't as hawkish as the title and subhead suggest. The authors conclude not with an exhortation but with a warning.

… the United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or living with a nuclear Iran and the regional fallout.

Still, they suggest that the United States should consider bombing Iran not only to keep it from mounting a nuclear attack on Israel, but to keep Israel from attacking Iran. As a non-signatory to the nuclear non-Proliferation Act, Israel possesses a nuclear program that's at least as much outside international law as Iran's. Applying the concept of a preemptive or preventive attack equally, shouldn't the United States attack Israel as well?

At Foreign Policy, Mark Hibbs, the reporter who helped break the AQ Khan-nuclear black market story and is now with the Carnegie Endowment, writes:

The International Atomic Energy Agency's newest report on Iran's nuclear program … brings forth evidence that the Islamic Republic has covered a lot of technical ground to develop a nuclear weapon over the past two decades. But it stops short of the most incendiary charge: that Iran's political leadership masterminded a secret program to possess atomic arms. In view of the wealth of incriminating detail that the IAEA presented in the report, that omission may be the only face-saving argument left to Tehran to permit diplomacy to continue as usual. And because the report draws no conclusions about how far along Iran's nuclear weapons program is, it will be irrelevant to Israel's calculus of whether to attack Iranian nuclear installations." [Emphasis added.]

In other words

… the IAEA report should certainly not be considered a casus belli.

Cross-posted from IPS Special Project RightWeb.

When the International Atomic Energy Agency released its report this week claiming “credible” evidence that Iran has been seeking to develop a nuclear weapon since at least 2003, the responses of right-wing demagogues were predictable, if alarming.

The narrative was simple, echoing an old trope most recently rehashed after the United States claimed to have foiled an Iranian assassination plot in Washington: sanctions have failed, Iran will never “respond” to diplomacy, and war is the only option. “Diplomacy has never resolved problems with Iran,” writes Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. “Only overwhelming pain will convince the supreme leader that the Islamic Republic cannot shoulder the costs of his quest.” (Rubin once wrote to Right Web complaining that we unfairly accused him of wanting to attack Iran.)

Rubin’s apparent bloodlust might seem marginal in a less toxic diplomatic environment. But his comments come amid a flurry of anti-Iranian posturing in Washington as well as Tel Aviv, where factions of Netanyahu’s cabinet have reportedly been pressing for a unilateral strike on Iran. Defying the Israeli government’s official silence in response to the report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak insisted that Israel could attack Iran and suffer “not even 500” casualties, and President Simon Peres remarked earlier this week that "The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option.”
 
Meanwhile in Washington, while neoconservative commentators were preparing their remarks that diplomacy doesn’t work with Iran, members of Congress were setting about ensuring that it wouldn’t. Led by the hard-right Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced last week a harsh sanctions bill that would effectively criminalize most contact between U.S. diplomats and Iranian officials. Paul Pillar noted at the National Interest that the bill “would prevent any exploration of ways to resolve disagreement over that Iranian nuclear program that we are supposedly so intensely concerned about,” concluding that it “vividly illustrates how mindless the pressuring and isolation of Iran has become.” Another bill passed by the committee would impose stringent sanctions on Iran’s central bank, something Iran previously said it would consider an act of war.
 
Even the United Kingdom is reportedly preparing plans to attack Iran.
 
Although a few doubts have been raised about the report’s findings and implications, John Glaser has ventured a possible rationale for Iran’s nuclear ambitions: namely, the U.S. has invaded and occupied the countries to Iran’s east and west, continues to run warships in the Persian Gulf, has cultivated client states hostile to Iran, and has waged a covert campaign of assassination and cyber warfare against the country. “In such an environment,” Glaser asks, “why wouldn’t the Iranian government want a nuclear weapon?”
 
Still, Mark Dubowitz of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin that “no one can reasonably argue that countries threatened by Iran have not tried all peaceful alternatives.”
 
Well, by that measure of “peaceful,” all but one.

Cross-posted from Reflexive Fire.

They are beating the war drums again for the attack on Iran. Reports are that sometime after the IAEA report (no doubt bought and paid for) comes out on the 9th that we will see Israel initiate the strike and "drag" the US into the conflict. I'm banking on sometime between 22NOV and 28NOV based on ambient light illumination levels, with the new moon happening on 25NOV with 0% illumination as ideal conditions for stealth aircraft and other bombers.

Source: Moonrise, Moonset and Moonphase for Iran – Tehran – November 2011 

Jack Murphy, an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran, served in the 3rd Ranger Battalion and the 5th Special Forces Group and on tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. He posts at Reflexive Fire.

Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars, has written an article outlining the escalation of the joint U.S.-Israeli cyber attack on Iran's nuclear program. A new malware, apparently built off of the Stuxnet worm used against Iran's centrifuge systems between 2009 and 2010, is in development:

According to former and serving US intelligence officials, leaders of the three major software companies, Sergey Brin at Google, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle have been working with Israel's top cyber warriors and have now come up with a new version of a Stuxnet-like worm that can bring down Iran's entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to breakout, according to US intelligence sources.

[Snip]

This new Stuxnet worm is being advanced by administration and intelligence officials as a more powerful tool with a stronger range and capability than the previous version. Officials want this new cyber capability to derail any military action that could result in a regional war.

You have to ask, if it's that good, why stop at deterrence when you can aim for preemption? It would be far easier for Israeli, U.S. and UK warplanes to operate over Iran in the event of an attack if this "Super Stuxnet" scrambled Iran's air defense systems, rendering early warning and interception systems impotent. It opens up new scenarios for U.S. action -- covert or overt -- vis a vis Iran's nuclear program. Surely the UK military, which has committed to reinforcing the U.S. naval presence in the Gulf and whose officials spoke at length in the Guardian on what might be used to take out Iran's nuclear assets (Tomahawk cruise missile, airstrikes, commandos) will welcome this new tool. 



Far from being a deterrent, this new malware has the potential to be the software equivalent of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Yet while "Super Stuxnet" might turn into a U.S.-Israeli trump card, it also has the potential to become the electronic equivalent of Operation Fast and Furious.



Stuxnet, which entered the world wide web as early as 2009 and was discovered at work in Iran the next year, was built under U.S.-Israeli government auspices using stolen Taiwanese software certificates so that it could infect a widely-used "industrial control system made by the German conglomerate Siemens that was used to program controllers that drive motors, valves and switches," i.e., Iranian centrifuge components. According to Wired magazine, the sophistication of the device and its target befuddled security experts because no one could initially figure out why a hacker would want to sabotage these systems (the answer was that the hackers were government-backed cyber warfare experts).



Then again, this avenue of attack is not new. If certain Cold Warriors are to be believed, the U.S. has a thing for valve sabotage. Thomas C. Reed, a former Secretary of the Air Force and Reagan-era advisor affiliated with the nuclear-warhead manufacturer Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, contends that in the 1980s, the U.S. discovered a KGB network that existed solely to steal and reverse engineer Western computer technology. Rather than expose the network, the U.S. used information from a KGB double agent's papers (the "Farewell" Dossier) to determine what companies the KGB was stealing from. The U.S. then slipped all manner of cyber ordinance into their products. One such "logic bomb" allegedly destroyed a key Soviet pipeline by scrambling the software that controlled the pressure and flow of oil. The story of this sabotage effort was publicized by William Safire in 2004, and by the CIA itself in 2007. 

Programming valves and motors to malfunction? Now doesn't that sound familiar?



If this "Super Stuxnet" does exist, then it represents a comprehensive sabotage plan with far grander goals than the original Stuxnet, or even the "Farewell" Dossier, which, for all its defense applications (launch silo shutters unable to be opened or closed due to a bug?) was only targeted at the Soviet economy. It essentially amounts to an internet kill switch + EMP that can be activated remotely -- or is already capable of activating itself at a preprogrammed time. 

Iran, like the USSR in the 1980s, presumably has no advanced cyber warfare capacity to retaliate with, despite its attempts to play up its own cyber warfare capacity. The USSR could not identify or isolate the electronic weapons used against it in the 1980s. Iran today would likely have a tough time doing anything more with "Super Stuxnet" than enduring it's machinations. But Iran has some friends who might be more adept at turning "Super Stuxnet" on its handlers.



Russia, of course, comes to mind. Revenge for "Farewell"? Poetic, but not pragmatic. Instead, Russia would presumably be interested in both the original and the new Stuxnets because of their security applications. Defensively, seeing how these worms work would help Russia enhance protection of its own nuclear production assets and protect its communications systems from being scrambled during a military action. Offensively, we saw Russia use cyber warfare in the 2008 Georgian conflict, targeting civilian, government and military internet assets. For all Russia's financial and technical problems, she does endeavor to stay on the cutting edge in every military arm.

The cutting edge is very important for Russia not just because of NATO, but because she shares a very long border with the world's leading cyber warfare aspirant, the People's Republic of China -- which also happen to be friends of Tehran's.



China's interests in seeing how the Stuxnets work are basically similar to Russia's, with the added goal of surpassing the U.S.'s own cyber warfare capabilities as soon as possible. The People's Liberation is Army is tailoring cyber warfare assets towards an "Integrated Network Electronic Warfare" that can target U.S. civilian and military infrastructure, from satellites to stop lights. 



So, whatever success or deterrence "Super Stuxnet" brings Tel Aviv and Washington, I'd like to ask its creators what they think the Iranians did with the original Stuxnet-contaminated hardware after removing it?

A. Dumped it in an electronic graveyard 

B. Locked it in a heavily-guarded warehouse

C. Passed it onto the People's Republic of China and/or Russia



Of course, this presumes China and Russia have normal diplomatic relations with Iran, the kind of relations in which countries with some shared strategic objectives -- securing energy access, increasing their regional influence, undermining American hyperpower -- exchange military, financial and diplomatic support on a semi-regular basis.



It doesn't take much. One flash drive, a laptop or two. Maybe a server. All bundled off to bunkers in Moscow or Shanghai c/o the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 



As Richard Sale quotes an unnamed U.S. official, cyberweapons are essentially electronic bioweapons. And when you want to see how your opponent's bioweapons work, you need infected tissue samples -- both to make a cure, and then to engineer your own, superior version.

Paul Mutter is a graduate student at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.