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Natanz is a city in the Central District of Natanz County, Isfahan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district. It is 70 kilometres (43 mi) south-east of Kashan.
James Edward "Hoss" Cartwright is a retired United States Marine Corps general who last served as the eighth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from August 31, 2007, to August 3, 2011. He previously served as the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, from September 1, 2004, to August 10, 2007, and as Acting Commander, U.S. Strategic Command from July 9, 2004, to September 1, 2004. He retired from the Marine Corps on August 3, 2011, after nearly 40 years of service.
Operation Merlin was a United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for a component of a nuclear weapon ostensibly in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, or to frame Iran.
David E. Sanger is an American journalist who is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, writing since 1982, covering foreign policy, globalization, nuclear proliferation, and the presidency.
Oghab 2 is an Iranian counter-espionage agency tasked to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from threats, including sabotage and cyber warfare. According to The New York Times, Iran has acknowledged that it is fighting nuclear espionage, and has foiled attempts to recruit spies and defectors to pass secrets out of their enrichment facilities. The New York Times also states this may be due to efforts rumoured to have started under the George W. Bush administration in the United States to sabotage parts imported into Iran. It is claimed these efforts were accelerated under President Barack Obama's administration, with the facilities facing trouble with poor designs and difficulty obtaining parts, due to sanctions imposed by the United Nations.
Iran's nuclear program is made up of a number of nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactors and various nuclear fuel cycle facilities.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of Iran, from the Mosaddegh coup of 1953 to the present day. The CIA is said to have collaborated with the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its personnel may have been involved in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. More recently in 2007-8 CIA operatives were claimed to be supporting the Sunni terrorist group Jundallah against Iran, but these claims were refuted by a later investigation.
Cyberwarfare is the use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of information systems for strategic or military purposes. As a major developed economy, the United States is highly dependent on the Internet and therefore greatly exposed to cyber attacks. At the same time, the United States has substantial capabilities in both defense and offensive power projection thanks to comparatively advanced technology and a large military budget. Cyberwarfare presents a growing threat to physical systems and infrastructures that are linked to the internet. Malicious hacking from domestic or foreign enemies remains a constant threat to the United States. In response to these growing threats, the United States has developed significant cyber capabilities.
Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran. Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, multiple independent news organizations recognize Stuxnet to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games. The program, started during the Bush administration, was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama's presidency.
Flame, also known as Flamer, sKyWIper, and Skywiper, is modular computer malware discovered in 2012 that attacks computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program is used for targeted cyber espionage in Middle Eastern countries.
Cyberweapons are commonly defined as malware agents employed for military, paramilitary, or intelligence objectives as part of a cyberattack. This includes computer viruses, trojans, spyware, and worms that can introduce malicious code into existing software, causing a computer to perform actions or processes unintended by its operator.
An ongoing concern in the area of nuclear safety and security is the possibility that terrorist organizations may attack facilities possessing radioactive material in order to cause widespread radioactive contamination or to construct nuclear weapons. Such facilities may include nuclear power plants, civilian research reactors, uranium enrichment plants, fuel fabrication plants, uranium mines, and military bases where nuclear weapons are stored. The attack threat is of several general types: commando-like ground-based attacks on equipment which if disabled could lead to a reactor core meltdown or widespread dispersal of radioactivity, external attacks such as an aircraft crash into a reactor complex, or cyber attacks.
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Cyberwarfare is a part of the Iranian government's "soft war" military strategy. Being both a victim and wager of cyberwarfare, Iran is considered an emerging military power in the field. Since November 2010, an organization called "The Cyber Defense Command" has been operating in Iran under the supervision of the country's "Passive Civil Defense Organization" which is itself a subdivision of the Joint Staff of Iranian Armed Forces.
Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) is an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility located 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the Iranian city of Qom, near Fordow village, at a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base. The site is under the control of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). It is the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility, the other one being that of Natanz. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, possible coordinates of the facility's location are: 34.88459°N 50.99596°E.
Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power is a 2012 book by David E. Sanger. It discusses the foreign policy of the Obama administration, with an emphasis on the president's use of covert operations, drone strikes, and cyberwarfare. In 2016, the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal investigators regarding his alleged disclosure of classified information to Sanger about the military use of the Stuxnet computer worm on the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, an operation detailed in the book.
The 2020 Iran explosions were a series of eleven explosions in Iran, including at an advanced centrifuge assembly facility, alleged missile sites, petrochemical centers, power plants, a nuclear enrichment facility and a medical clinic. First reported on 25 June 2020, The Iranian government has denied reports of explosions in its missile sites while acknowledging damage to its largest nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.
2021 Natanz Incident refers to a suspected attack on the Natanz nuclear site in Iran. The Natanz nuclear facility is located in the wilderness of the province of Isfahan, in central Iran. This site is scouted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Erik Jacob van Sabben was a Dutch engineer. He was allegedly recruited in 2008 by the Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD to infect the centrifuge infrastructure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran with the Stuxnet malware in 2009. The industrial espionage operation required years of preparation and cooperation between the CIA and Mossad, and cost $1 billion in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games. Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
Operations attributed to Israel in Iran is a list of subversive operations in Iran that have been attributed to Israel in the public opinion or the speech of Iranian officials. Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for many of these operations. Israeli authorities have always presented themselves in opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran and their propagated ideas.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Sanger, David E. (1 June 2012). "Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran". The New York Times (New York ed.). WASHINGTON. p. 1. eISSN 1553-8095. ISSN 0362-4331. LCCN sn00061556. OCLC 1645522. Archived from the original on 25 March 2022. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyberweapons
- ↑ Kamiński, Mariusz Antoni (25 June 2020). "Operation "Olympic Games." Cyber-sabotage as a tool of American intelligence aimed at counteracting the development of Iran's nuclear programme". Security and Defence Quarterly. 29 (2). National Defence University of Warsaw: 63–71. doi: 10.35467/sdq/121974 . eISSN 2544-994X. ISSN 2300-8741. LCCN 2015212407. OCLC 1112982546.
[...] the operation of the Stuxnet virus caused the destruction of around 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz site, which could have delayed Iran's nuclear programme by about 1 year.
- ↑ Ambinder, Marc (5 June 2012). "Did America's Cyber Attack on Iran Make Us More Vulnerable?" . U.S. The Atlantic . eISSN 2151-9463. ISSN 1072-7825. LCCN 93642583. OCLC 936540106 . Retrieved 30 March 2022.
America's attack -- which, Sanger reports, the government nicknamed "Olympic Games" -- is probably the most significant covert manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum since World War II, when cryptanalysts broke the Enigma cipher that allowed access to Nazi codes.
- 1 2 Coll, Steve (6 June 2012). "The Rewards (and Risks) of Cyber War" . Daily Comment. The New Yorker . ISSN 0028-792X. LCCN 28005329. OCLC 909782404. Archived from the original on 14 November 2021. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
"Olympic Games" seems to be, so far as is known, the first formal offensive act of pure cyber sabotage by the United States against another country [...]
- ↑ Nakashima, Ellen; Miller, Greg; Tate, Julie; Warrick, Joby (19 June 2012). "U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say". National Security. The Washington Post . ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 2269358. Archived from the original on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action," said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. "Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.
- ↑ "Reports: Retired General Target Of Leaks Probe". Here & Now. WBUR-FM . Associated Press. 28 June 2013. Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is under investigation for allegedly leaking classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to media reports. [...] Retired Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright has been told he is a target of the probe, NBC News and The Washington Post reported Thursday
- ↑ Nakashima, Ellen; Goldman, Adam; Horwitz, Sari (10 March 2015). "Leak investigation stalls amid fears of confirming U.S.-Israel operation". National Security. The Washington Post . ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 2269358. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
A sensitive leak investigation of a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has stalled amid concerns that a prosecution in federal court could force the government to confirm a joint U.S.-Israeli covert operation targeting Iran, according to current and former U.S. officials.