Vol. 76/No. 24      June 18, 2012

Sabotage and spy operations directed at Iranian computer networks is part of a broader imperialist-led assault against the country, including crippling economic sanctions, assassinations of nuclear scientists, bombings and military threats.

The Iranian government says the purpose of its uranium enrichment program is to develop the capacity to produce nuclear fuel for much-needed energy production and isotopes for medical research. Washington and its imperialist allies maintain that Tehran is working to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Times report on Washington’s involvement in computer sabotage came days after researchers at Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based security company, reported that a virus nicknamed Flame had infected hundreds of computers in Iran and other Mideast countries.

According to Kaspersky, Flame is designed to copy and steal data, turn on a computer microphone and record all the sounds in its vicinity, take screen shots, read documents and emails, capture passwords and logins, and communicate with and determine the location of other nearby computers via Bluetooth.

“The malicious program,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, “left experts all but certain that a government sponsor intent on cyberwarfare and intelligence-gathering was behind [the effort] … because of the likely cost of such a sophisticated endeavor.”

The New York Times article described how the current administration of President Barack Obama accelerated a cyberwar program code-named “Olympic Games,” initiated in 2006 by the previous administration of George W. Bush and aimed at disrupting Iran’s nuclear program.

With the help of a special Israeli military unit, says the Times, the National Security Agency and other U.S. government agencies developed two cyberweapons aimed at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant—one designed “to draw the equivalent of an electrical blueprint” of the plant, the other to inflict damage based on that information.

The latter was the infamous Stuxnet—a computer worm that inflicted substantial damage to networks and centrifuges used to enrich uranium at the facility in the summer of 2010.

“The attack on Iran,” wrote the website ProPublica, “became the first known instance of the U.S. using computer code to physically damage another country’s infrastructure.”

The New York Times article was published barely a week after talks between the Iranian government and representatives from the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the U.S.) plus Germany about Iran’s nuclear program ended in a stalemate.

The two-day meeting came to naught when Teheran turned down demands, among other things, that it close the Fordow nuclear plant near Qom, stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and let the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency inspect the Parshin munitions plant near Tehran—in exchange for some aid that included parts for civil aircraft.

The Iranian government was looking for a reduction of existing sanctions and recognition of its right to enrich uranium. The parties agreed to meet again June 18 in Moscow, less than two weeks before a series of new sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union on Iran’s banks and oil industry become effective.  
 
 
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