US 'launched cyber-attack on Iran weapons systems'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Besides the weird rehashing of "they're building nukes" propaganda, the linked articles https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/with-... and https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/us/politics/us-iran-cyber... seem much more informative in that regard.
Secondly, why would you publicise you engaged in a bit of cyber warfare - particularly successful cyber warfare. This literally notifies the enemy to upgrade/fix/patch/take counter measures, solidifies their defenses, and provides a clear aggressor.
Amateur hour from the CISA... or perhaps someone needs a public win to justify another round of funding increases...
Oh look.. https://www.cyberscoop.com/house-bill-boost-cisa-funding-335...
335 Million Dollars! Such a corrupt system.
The second point is not surprising: Trump needed something after caving to Iran's show of force. Operational and effectiveness concerns are secondary, it's not an administration renowned for long term planning.
The hope with any attack is that its disruptive effects outweigh the intelligence your adversary gainsfrom observing your actions.
As far as providing a “clear aggressor” well there purpose was retaliatory for a drone which Iran admitted that they shot down.
The point is that Iran at least took responsibility for the attack this time, versus the tanker attacks in the Strait.
And Trump claimed it was someone acting fast and loose because he doesn’t want to fight a war in the Middle East. Now that the US is the world’s biggest oil producer, we have a lot less incentive to be involved.
Trump ran on a platform of getting out of the Middle East. He would love nothing more. Iran shooting down drones and mining the Strait certainly makes that difficult.
There are powerful interests in the US that want a war with Iran. The President isn’t one of them, as we have clearly seen now with the air strikes having been called off.
He hates treaties. He believes in ordering countries what to do, and intimidating or bombing them if they don't comply, and treaties make that difficult.
He's delusional, not a credible person, and in no way has he been rehabilitated.
Of course, it could be a smokescreen to make it up on the second term. Occam's Razor says that's not correct.
I imagine part of the reason they shot it down is because the rhetoric coming from Washington is such, that an attack could come at any moment and is hard for the Iranians to tell if this is it or not, (which I think is part of the U.S. tactic to provoke them to do something stupid).
The U.S. would not tolerate Chinese drones off its coast either.
Now, China is competitor number 1, so I don't think they would, (unless China agreed to do the same at its borders). And is not like Iran is not tolerating countless U.S. military bases around its borders, I just suspect they're at the edge of their seats, expecting an attack and sending an armed drone to their border doesn't seem too friendly.
The U.S. also knows that Russian planes flying are not there to bomb them, whereas the Iranians are hearing constant rhetoric that the U.S. is just about to bomb them.
Moreover, as I said, the U.S. knows Russia is not about to conduct a surprise bombing raid on them, so does Russia know the same of the U.S. - They both have nuclear weapons and doing so would be catastrophic for both sides. Iran on the other hand expects a U.S. bombing raid any moment and in fact Trump just admitted one was ready to go ahead, so it's a bit different.
In fact, I suspect the U.S. knows all this and provoking a reaction from the Iranians to support further action from the U.S. was precisely the goal of this drone.
As to motives, who knows. Iran could be trying to move confrontation from economic to military, where it has a shot on regional parity. With all talk about Bolton, Iraq, Vietnam and on this admin is very docile. Iran came out on top from this confrontation, bolstering its regional influence, so why not.
I am not too sure. The US are already attacking Iran, by strangling its economy, effectivly subjecting it to a blockade. They don't need an open war for that, it would be an unnecessary cost, economic and diplomatic- but at the same time they have to show they're absolutely ready for it.
For the US (but in fact Israel and Saudi Arabia, the only ones that gain from this) the best option is to keep choking Iran in silence, without much hassle, so the rest of the world can keep looking the other way.
That is true, it's a policy the U.S. has employed in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion and is now also perusing in Venezuela. In some ways you're right, it makes it look like Iran's acting in a vacuum and the U.S. is doing nothing to provoke it.
On the other hand, if they were to bomb Iran, it's not like they'd let the sanctions go in exchange for the bombing, it would be in addition to the sanctions. And yes, it would draw minimal condemnation from the EU, China and Russia, but that's about it.
> Iran is not inclined to help Trump come down from the tree he has climbed and would rather keep him confused and cornered. Furthermore, Iran would love to see Trump fail to win a second term, and will do everything to help oust him from the White House at the end of his mandate in 2020.
> Moreover, Iran has established a joint operations room to inform all its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan of every step it is adopting in confronting the US in case of all-out war in the Middle East. Iran’s allies have increased their level of readiness and alert to the highest level; they will participate in the war from the moment it begins if necessary. According to sources, Iran’s allies will not hesitate to open fire against an already agreed on bank of objectives in a perfectly organised, orchestrated, synchronised and graduated response, anticipating a war that may last many months.
[...]
> Sources confirmed that, in case of war, Iran aims to stop the flow of oil from the Middle East completely, not by targeting tankers but by hitting the sources of oil in every single Middle Eastern country, whether these countries are considered allies or enemies. The objective will be to cease all oil exports from the Middle East to the rest of the world.
https://ejmagnier.com/2019/06/21/iran-and-trump-on-the-edge-...
Recall the Iranian attack on Saudi banks which encrypted 30,000 desktops and destroyed the backups?
The implication is that the attack caused permanent or difficult to repair damage to the systems. There is a quote that they expect it to take months to bring everything back online.
But... I'm a bit puzzled.
The implication of a Suter-style "cyber attack" (not just dumb radar jamming) is that the target military communications network is compromised enough for the attacker to intelligently DoS certain nodes in it, send bogus packets or sniff traffic.
If this was the case here, then the USA basically told Iran that the Iranian infrastructure used for communicating with some of its military assets is compromised, and the USA showed how much it is compromised, too.
Pointing out weak spots in your enemy's defences sounds like a somewhat strange thing to do, since the enemy will no doubt fix those omissions rather quickly.
One reason I can think of was to prevent enterprising third parties from exploiting the same weak spots.
It was essentially similar to (but via radio spectrum as opposed to light) gaining access to a police speed camera by firing light at the camera sensor, gaining control of it, and then re-programming it to either do nothing useful, or even in extreme cases take license plate pictures of police cars going under the speed limit. Sounds impossible (and likely is for my camera example), but...
I imagine in the mean time more modern Russian systems are now much more hardened to this type of attack, so maybe the situation is different...
If the drone was operating over Iranian territory, Iran is well within their rights to shoot it down. What would the US do with an Iranian drone operating over US territory? Over sensitive military sites?
Our politicians don't have the backbone to stand up to the US and the ones that might are obliterated by the press (not a Corbyn fan but it's interesting to read what the press says and then what he actually said just to see how blatant it is).
Honestly I'm in favour of the UK taking a much lesser role in international affairs, as a second rate power we simply shouldn't be rattling around the place like it's the 19th century - We should be more like a Germany or Italy and less like US-lite.
Israel has a few motivations, land is just one of them.
Whether it's land, oil, distracting the plebeians or something else, for the most part it boils down to power.
People will talk pro-USA if they're in majority here.
(No, Israel doesn't count. That's just a grudge.)
Wikipedia: Gharbzadegi (Persian: غرب زدگی) is a pejorative Persian term variously translated as ‘Westernized’, ‘West-struck-ness’[1], ‘Westoxification’, ‘Westitis’, ‘Euromania’, or ‘Occidentosis’.
I’m not even counting the allegations EU nations made against Iran for attempted terrorism in EU mainland.
Absolutely, yes. Why would you not?
Even if America were Iran's only enemy, America has a history of supporting other nations in wars against Iran. So Iran plainly still has an interest in putting up a capable defense against a conventional military attack.
The FBI classifies such things as acts of terror, yet we have done nothing to protect our own companies. If Iran wants to keep attacking our nation to compensate for lost oil money, it is about time we start crippling their infrastructure until they simply have no way to send a packet to the outside world.