Cyber Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facility | Hacker News Reader

Cyber Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facility

bbc.com

257 pointsstunt328 comments

These are probably the most highly guarded facilities in Iran. Justified or not, it is absolutely incredible that certain intelligence organizations are able to pull off these types of attacks again and again.

We will probably never know how they did it, but I hope I can read about it one day.

While not downplaying it, It was probably around 70% "human hacking" and only 30% computer\hardware hacking.

For me that makes it all the more interesting. I would assume that most of the people that work at those facilities are subject to intense security checks and surveillance.

Despite that someone is able to either convince or trick some of the workers to do something that comes at a huge personal risk. Human hacking is no less interesting than software/hardware hacking

The soft spots are always blackmail, extortion and threats. Once they have people in one of these positions, they have a lot of leverage.

On something like this, I expect the "human hacking" to be much harder, and the "everything is broken" nature of computing to be nearly unchanged. So I expect it to be computer hacking at any place where it's possible, and human hacking only to run around theoretically unbeatable protections (like air-gaps).

Human hacking in a police state with no diplomatic mission for cover and where nearly every foreigner is surveilled from the moment they enter makes this even more remarkable.

The fact that western intelligence agencies and especially the Israelis managed to develop a network of assets in Iran is marvel of tradecraft.

I remember a while ago some disgruntled folk at US army base started shooting at and killing a group of other army men. In other instances some folks were radicalized online and killed a bunch of random citizens.

US has top notch intelligence.

A lot of Israel operations are done through recruiting and paying dissidents. Iran is a big country and their rulers have made many internal enemies and aren't that competent in general. Israel is just using this weakness to incur as much damage it can either to the infrastructure or by killing civilians (eg. scientists being exploded in front of their homes) without any apparent consequence from the so called "free world".

So should we celebrate how those who radicalized these mass shooters online have such sophisticated cyber capabilities?

This is a baseless guess.

While Israel would be the #1 suspect as they want the JCPOA deal to fail, I would assume that some people in Iran are also against the deal and want it to see it fail, so an internal sabotage isn't really out of the question.

well we're talking about a facility that isn't supposed to be connected to the internet. so there has to be an internal actor. like there was with stuxnet

Yes, no, maybe.

Whilst you would expect most airgapped systems to also be in buildings that intentionally block signals, there are a ton of "unexpected" interactions, some of which may give you ways to remotely transmit when no transmission is expected to be possible.

Like the fact that USB 3.0 can interfere with the 2.4Ghz spectrum [0], thanks to resonance.

Israel has also previously demonstrated malware called Odini [1] and aIR-Jumper [2] to bypass Faraday protections around systems and exfiltrate data.

[0] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/io/uni...

[1] https://www.rambus.com/blogs/bypassing-air-gapped-faraday-ca...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/attac...

What looks like a planned explosion just happend (front page NYT)

So it does appear to be someone at the facility.

Why would you assume the people in Iran want the deal to fail?

I would suspect that most Iranians, regardless of if they are for or against the nuclear program, just want sanction relief and don’t care how they get it. At the end of the day, most people just want to have a good life and sanction relief will help that happen.

There is undoubtedly some hardliners that want the nuclear program to continue so they can develop nuclear weapons in order to provide a reliable deterrent against Israeli aggression.

What aggression‽ Has israel ever stated that their one mission in life is to wipe out iran? Cause iran HAS stated that towards israel.

Self defence isn't aggression. If you provide a credible threat against me, you better believe I'll punch you in the face and knock you out first.

Israel's goal in the region is to be able to legitimize itself vis-à-vis other Arab states, without stopping any human rights abuses.

Since the alignment of the gulf states with the US, the only obstacle to that is Iran and Iranian influence.

Because of this, Israel is very willing for Iran to be militarily destroyed, and members of the Israeli government have called for the invasion of Iran multiple times.

Simply self defence is far from the goal. Israel would not be able to survive without changing its internal structure unless the Arab world is dominated by the US which prevents actions that go against Israeli interests.

I never claimed all people in Iran wanted the deal to fail. All you need is one person, with the right access. Can you not imagine the possibility of one hardliner wanting the deal to fail?

If you go back and watch how Stuxnet, ie "Olympic Games," was created, and the methods they used to figure everything out down to the particular model of centrifuges to target, it really is quite eye opening on how extensive these operations are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wapd1-E5dzc

There’s a lot of blatant racism in that video, but that aside, his description does not align with the way I understand the attack occurred.

Alternatively, now literally any normal fuck up at Natanz can be played off as a cyber hack for political points, and everyone unquestionably assumes that is plausible.

The null hypothesis is underrated everywhere.

>These are probably the most highly guarded facilities in Iran

This seems unlikely. Iran's nuclear facilities aren't overly important compared to things like their oil production or likely any military facility, and there is incredibly detailed information available about the site in question as a result of many nuclear inspections.

Iran isn't a totalitarian society and it doesn't keep tabs on all its citizens. There are lots of dissident groups in Iran that want to see the regime fall (many Arab minorities, for example). Recruiting from these groups to do Israel's dirty work is not complicated. Some of the Iranian scientists Israel has had killed were apparently killed by Iranian gangsters. In one instance, they drove up to the car the scientist was travelling in at an intersection, smashed the car window and fired multiple shots at him. Not that sophisticated, but gets the job done.

There is not much evidence that Israel's cyber warfare capabilities exceeds that of other states. However, Israel is clearly less reluctant than other states to use what they have offensively. Perhaps because Israel would suffer virtually no diplomatic fallout from getting caught and because it would be Iranians - not Israeli agents - who would be hanged.

Personally, I think praising Israel's cyber warfare is like praising pedophiles for amazing tech savyness for running child pornography rings undetected for so long. It leaves a bad taste, especially since Israel is trying to rebrand itself as a tech leader. The idea is that we should forget about its ongoing human rights abuses and gawk at all the tech Israel is producing.

it is a totalitarian state, just a weak one

It's not "branding". They sell stuff buyers want.

> There is not much evidence that Israel's cyber warfare capabilities exceeds that of other states.

Israeli cyber warriors are known to be among the best in the world, on par with anything other major powers have to offer.

That's the great thing about cyber attacks: all you need is one person putting one USB in a port for 30seconds, years before d-day and you're there. Easier to hide than a bomb, more reliable than any human agent, more reliable than spec ops, and totally deniable.

The real take-away from this is that you have a _very_ competent cyber-actor (Iran) getting pancaked at will by an _extremely_ competent cyber-actor (Israel) in what one would presume to be one of it's most, _if not most_, cybersecure locations (Natanz).

Nation-states using cyber capabilities in this way, and the non-response it evokes, is reminiscent of how pre-WWI nation-states would conduct policy and international affairs with their armies.

It's something I wish the general public were more cognizant of. We need to openly talk about this type of power and conflict. Otherwise we're going to have another WWI-type moment, where it takes millions of people dying before we realize that the state of the game has changed because of new technologies.

There is a new cyber study from HP and a UK Uni.

“We may be at far greater risk from the internet than was ever suspected,” Michail McGuire, senior lecturer of criminology, said. His new study of the nation-state cybersphere shows that we may be closer to advanced cyber conflict (cyberwar) than at any point since the inception of the internet.

I thought it was far fetched, but incident like this show it’s not.

https://press.hp.com/content/dam/sites/garage-press/press/pr...

> A cyber-treaty won’t be coming overnight: As a comparatively new area of international relations, there are fewer 'rules' and far more grey areas – for example, blurred lines between Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups and Nation States. While there is hope we will one day come to an agreement on cyberwarfare and cyberweapons, today there is very little in place that can stem the tide.

And there it is on page 1!

Excellent contribution, thank you so much for this.

"closer" as in "if you listen to the firewall log, you can hear the artillery"

> _very_ competent cyber-actor

Please elaborate on this. As someone with direct exposure to this area and in this geography, my experience could not be described this way at all.

Let's not forget Iran's first "military satellite" was launched with an over the counter unencrypted amateur cubesat transponder manufactured by a Californian company

I am not at all involved in security, but from my novice understanding, they appear somewhat competent.

Wiping of a US casino's IT infra in 2014:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/irani...

Breaching of critical power/water infrastructure in 2015:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hackers-infrastructure-1....

What you see them doing isn't all that impressive. For the most part when you see these types of retaliatory attacks they look complicated but the reality is that they're fairly low tech.

For the casino hacks they brute forced some passwords and then wrote malware with Visual Basic to steal more credentials. The technical barriers there are fairly low. For the attacks on the water infrastructure they probably just scanned looking for open systems and ran off the shelf exploits on the ones that looked the most interesting.

Attacking in this way is a lot easier than attacking a specific target. If I just wanted to "hurt" a country from a PR perspective then there's a lot of attack surface, and you only need to get one or two things through to make the news. Targeting something like a secure nuclear facility is orders of magnitude more difficult.

If you follow the cyberwarfare space, most of the powerful attacks are actually infowar, and social engineering, and human intelligence. It's not always as technical as Stuxnet (even Stuxnet wasn't possible without information operations and human intelligence). Intelligence Gathering and Cyber Intelligence are the most effective and powerful divisions.

Yes, what you observe them doing is not all that impressive, but that is all that is needed to attack these systems. There is no need to send a cruise missile when a light shove is enough.

Essentially every deployed system is so littered with security defects in every facet of both design and implementation that successful attacks against them can be developed and deployed at a cost of just a few tens of thousands to maybe a million dollars for a really good attack at the high end. Any reasonably-sized state actor can deploy literally thousands of times that many resources against their adversaries without even blinking and we know that the NSA and CIA were independently running hacking programs capable of attacking essentially every publicly deployed system in the world. Offense is so easy and defense is so bad it is ridiculous.

Iran has been both victim and predator of several cyberwarfare operations. They clearly have the experience and they are spending a lot of resources for a long time.

A quick search about their operations:

- Shamoon malware was categorized as cyberwarfare and it was used against Saudi Aramco, allegedly by Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamoon

- A blackout in Turkey was also linked to Iran

https://observer.com/2015/04/iran-flexes-its-power-by-transp...

- Iran is also (allegedly) active in Information Warfare, which is much more complicated than technical cyber attacks.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/16/russia-and-iran-tried-to-int...

- Israel and Iran are actively attacking each others infrastructure for a while.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/05/israel-and-iran-just-sh...

- Operation Newscaster. Cyber espionage and social engineering targeted senior U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, congresspeople, journalists, lobbyists, think tankers and defense contractors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Newscaster

- Operation Cleaver. targeted the military, oil and gas, energy and utilities, transportation, airlines, airports, hospitals and aerospace industries organizations worldwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cleaver

The observer article on the blackout in Turkey caused allegedly by Iran is just an opinion piece and claims to be one.

If citing a couple boneheaded moves like that mean they're not a competent actor, then who is? Consider: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-missile-code-00000000...

That wasn't incompetence, it was malicious compliance.

Given when we're talking about nations states as cyber-actors we're working with a pool of ~190. Compared to 90% of the other nation-states out there Iran is a _very_ competent cyber-actor. Enough so that it may even export that capability. This still means there are ~20 that are more competent, if not _extremely_ so.

Given your exposure in this geography can you name any of it's neighbors who have greater or even equal competency that aren't Israel or don't use citizens from an _extremely_ competent nation-state? They certainly had their way with Aramco, so not Saudi Arabia. Egypt? Jordan? Syria? Iraq? Perhaps Lebanon? And this just their neighbors. What about compared to Portugal or Spain? South Africa? Nigeria? Argentina or Mexico?

> Compared to 90% of the other nation-states out there Iran is a _very_ competent cyber-actor.

> Given your exposure in this geography can you name any of it's neighbors

Saudi Arabia targetted at least Bezos' phone

This is all pretty silly, isn't it? For the dollar figures involved in pulling off a highly-sophisticated attack (one that chains multiple zero days, including some in obscure products that imply the commissioning of vulnerabilities and not just their purchase off the black-market shelf as well as some in mainstream products with a real bidding interest), you're still talking about amounts of money so low that Cape Verde could be a _very_ competent cyber-actor if they wanted.

Seems we're both triggered by this emphasis on "_very_", or even use of that word at all. Obviously Iran has a variety of technical capabilities, such as evidenced by their national firewall and internal infrastructure, but are there any documented offensive campaigns successfully mounted against a foreign target?

The only attacks I know of are low brow phishing, DoS and web site defacements.

Again, I think it's very silly to point at any country, and particularly a country as huge as Iran, and suggest that they're somehow limited to "low-brow phishing, DoS, and website defacements". Iran can pull a million dollars out of their couch cushions any time they want. Do you know how much offensive cyber capability 1MM buys? When it comes to the stuff we use on HN as a measure of sophistication, the answer is: a lot.

North Korea can't even feed its own people or keep the lights on in 2/3rds of the country. But nobody suggests they're unsophisticated cyber actors; that would be a demonstrably silly statement. Meanwhile: people routinely travel in and out of Iran; if you're not an American, it remains a major tourist destination. They have trade relationships around the world. They're not a hermit kingdom. If they want a world-class "APT" team, or 15 of them, all they have to do is decide to have them. (I assume they decided that a long time ago).

If you think Iran is unsophisticated or has minimal capabilities, I'd suggest you just look at a map, and, for bonus points, a GDP ranking, and consider that whatever evidence you personally may have collected on Iran's capabilities, you're seeing what they've allowed you to see.

Myself, I wouldn't even pick a fight with Kiribati.

So most countries can acquire a world class cybersecurity capabilities.

What's the difference between what they can do, and what the leading countries in cybersecurity (US, Israel) can do(offensively and defensively)?

Is there a significant difference?

It's a big open question. There likely are things that only the G7+N can accomplish; when you see cryptographic advances in implants and exploits, that's a good sign; hardware implants and deep OEM supply chain attacks are another. But nuts and bolts CNE? It's hard to say, and hard to say how much damage any country could do if motivated.

The other big question is how much this stuff applies to defense. The US presumably has better defensive capabilities than Iran could hope to have, by far. But better enough to matter? Open question.

Took quite a few decades, if not centuries, for defensive capabilities to gain parity with/negate offensive ones after the introduction of gunpowder. I think the approach to cybersecurity thus far has been to try and protect against the projectile, instead of the instrument from which it's deployed. Buckle up.

> Again what is this based on

~170 nations that don't have the capability. Just because a 14-year old in Thailand can mount an attack doesn't mean Thailand's government or civil institutions have or utilize that capability. That makes them less than _very_ competent at it.

> Saudi Arabia targetted at least Bezos' phone

And a coup that was, likely using off-the-shelf software from an Italian company composed of engineers from two _extremely_ competent nation-states. That certainly shows how easy it is to acquire the capability, if not the competency. The KSA has been doing it for years with it's armed forces munitions and equipment.

Saudi Arabia bought the iphone exploit to hack Bezos from an Israeli company.

Fun fact, the text message with the malicious link was sent to Bezos by MBS himself

In my mind, most countries can't figure out how to plan or coordinate a cyber-attack. With a limited pool of nations to pick from, even being able to coordinate an attack makes you relatively "very competent" (among your peers), however, that would also be a matter of perspective. It's equally valid to determine a criteria of competency and rank/describe countries based on those thresholds.

I agree with your wider point but...

Launching a satellite means you can put a warhead anywhere on earth and no one can stop it. It's a achievement in rocketry, not whatever is on the end of the rocket. The actual satellite could be a crushed car for all anyone cares.

> a _very_ competent cyber-actor (Iran)

Nation state security competence includes locking down USB ports so someone can't deploy malware found off the street.

The same thing that has plagued the U.S. DoD since the advent of USB, but there's no denying that the U.S. is an _extremely_ competent cyber-actor.

It seems defense is harder than offense in this context.

Attacking is often easier than defense. How many countries that have ICBMs can reliably block incoming ICBMs?

On paper or in reality?

Either, really. Very few have the ability even in theory, whether anyone could intercept a bunch of ICBMs launched "in anger" seems questionable. Seems like an apt analogy talking about cybersecurity defenses.

Well yeah, that’s what I mean. I’m not convinced any of these actually work.

Sprinkling HID's or usb's with modified firmware around the target organization's parking lot is almost guaranteed to work. People get curious and few understand the danger.

I wonder if they sealed up their USB ports so nobody would randomly plug in a USB key this time?

Having competency in red team scenarios doesn't translate to having a cyber-proof national infrastructure, as is evident.

They are actually two wildly different problem sets. And the latter is boring & unsexy.

Also in my opinion, blue teaming is harder. Red team has to find one weakness to win. If blue team misses any system, vulnerability, process, anything, they are in trouble against the right attackers.

This can be seen by how many automated infiltration agents are around, and how few automated defense systems. And how annoyingly succesful they are.

Absolutely. The cyber security asymmetry in play. I'm actually working on this problem so it's very close to heart!

> Nation-states using cyber capabilities in this way

Strictly speaking, Iran is not a nation-state. It is a multiethnic state.

The way to avoid this confusion is to write ‘state’ (problem here is that this word also refers to American states) or ‘country’ (I think people might feel like this word is not sufficiently sophisticated?).

However the error is understandable as it is particularly common in discussions about cybersecurity (or national security, where ‘national’ means the USA). It’s especially silly in those cases as some typical US adversaries (Iran, Russia) are states which are not nation states.

This is true, although when I was studying international relations "nation-state" was an accepted catch-all for a "top-level" polity in international politics.

"State-level actor" is, I guess, the accurate schmancy way to say "country".

Is it not the case that a nation can be multiethnic?

I don’t see how Iran’s multiethnic populace disqualifies it’s claim on a national identity (Shia Islam).

On the wiki page for multinational states, I find reasonable examples (Russia, Belgium, UK), and Iran is absent. [1] Does this have to do with the Kurdish nation claiming territory within Iran?

Not trying to say you’re wrong, just trying to understand the terminology better.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_state

Nation is a word with two meanings. One is ‘country’ so the answer is yes (note that nation-state is a silly phrase under this meaning). You see it in terms like nationalisation of industry or national anthem. The other meaning is a group of people with (typically) shared ethnicity, cultural heritage, language, and often, country. For this a multiethnic country doesn’t usually fit the bill. But to some extent words can mean whatever you want them to and lots of groups want themselves to be considered nations (either to promote some unity across diverse people or to push out undesirable groups) even if they don’t strictly fit the usual definition.

What are you even talking about? Not only is Iran a nation-state, it is probably one of the first nation-states to exist. The Name of the country itself is close to 2000 years old, and the language they speak is at least 1400 years old. They have had a continuous culture for millennia, and identify themselves as a nation, by name, culture and mostly the language.

I think it's reasonable to debate the language aspect (that's why my original comment focused on religion, which at least appears to be more homogenous in surveys).

Apparently ~1/2 of Iranian citizens claim Farsi as their mother tongue, with many citizens claiming Turkic dialects, Kurdish, and "Linguistically-Iranian languages" that are not Farsi (in my mind, this is comparable to Gaeilge, Scots, Welsh within the UK).

Then again, I'm sure that identifying as an atheist or non-Shia Muslim in Iran is not in most citizens' best interests, regardless of their underlying beliefs.

I don't have a point or conclusion, I do think it's a reasonable thing to discuss. Ultimately, "nation" is an human construct, the and the people who have the authority to claim it are the Iranian people.

The Kurds (who compose a significant minority within Iran) would reject the nationalities "Iranian" or "Persian", I think; even more so than Catalans, Basque, or Galcian peoples would reject "Spanish". I don't know if other minorities comprising Iran would, too. It's an interesting question to ponder, though.

Anyways, thank you all for this pedantic stroll, it made me learn more about this part of the world than I probably would have, otherwise. :P

> Strictly speaking, Iran is not a nation-state. It is a multiethnic state.

Switzerland, Britain, ...

Strictly speaking, you need to consult the dictionary.

noun: a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory: leading industrialized nations.

Iran checks multiple boxes on that list.

As for US, is it really a nation or is it a corporate spin off? Curious, too, how those 13 bars ended up as 13 "states"..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

So it’s complicated because there is a loose definition of nation as a synonym of country (eg nationalised industry, national anthem, ...) and a second more narrow definition which is the one used in the term ‘nation-state.’ But if the former definition of nation is being used then it is entirely redundant and writing a long confusing term instead of a well understood one is just lazy writing.

Wikipedia gives a more narrow definition of nation-state than you (but English dictionaries by their nature tend to give broad definitions) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

It’s not complicated at all. You are insinuating that Iran is a complex of nationalities which is patent nonsense. Iran’s culture is so dominant, so well defined, and has been so long before some Europeans got together after dealing with Bonaparte and coming up with “Nation State”.

Nothing in the article speaks to either Iran's nor Israel's cyber competencies, those aren't take-aways, you brought them.

From where I'm sitting, Iran is a cyber circus.

The article is reporting on an event. We apply analysis and context to that event so that we may understand it's implications and effects. We then conduct our lives accordingly. In that we have taken something away with us from the article.

Can be achieved not only through technological means but also sabotage and infiltration.

Pretty sure there is a myriad of american working and middle class that would outright oppose a draft now more than ever. The government would have to go full on chinese censorship with the internet to suppress free speech regarding why you shouldn't have to go.

Sadly, I think I agree with your assessment that we are in a pre-next world war mode. There are now multiple smaller scale events that could easily transform from a local to a regional conflict. Reasonable people should be worried, because at least in WW2 we couldn't destroy the entire planet with one wrong move.

"Israeli media have suggested that the malfunction was a result of an Israeli cyber attack."

"Last July, sabotage was blamed for a fire at the Natanz site which hit a central centrifuge assembly workshop."

The same facility was targeted by Stuxnet in 2010.

It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes. So, if any one of them are planning another sabotage, there's probably a line.

Define "everyone"?

Practically every nation on Earth except Iran. Even the countries that have friendly relations with Iran would prefer to negotiate from a position of power. Notice that even after all these years that neither Russia, China, or any of the other nuclear powers have “lost” nuclear material or technical information to enable Iran to make a nuclear weapon. And none of the non-nuclear powers would be happy if Iran had nukes but they did not.

> Practically every nation on Earth except Iran

Including citizens of Iran.

The “almost” qualifier was intended for you. Other than that, more nukes on earth aren’t good for anyone, especially as Iranian nukes would enable - not restrain - their aggression.

I don't know, if Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons is to be trusted, I can identify somewhat with the argument for Iran gaining a deterrent, even though I'd _much_ prefer total nuclear disarmament in the region (effectively meaning just Israeli disarmament).

India and Pakistan aren’t in the region?

As the artificial abstract borders are usually drawn, no, thet are in South Asia not Southwest Asia or MENA; and this isn’t purely abstract, India really is not in any meaningful sense part of the region, and Pakistan, which borders rhe conventionally-defined region, is only tangentially, being more focussed on India, China, and Central Asia than the Middle East (except Iran because borders.)

Iran has no other agenda other than producing nuclear bombs and I say this as an Iranian.

Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars in the past decade on what the regime's claims "peaceful nuclear power", ie to produce electricity.

meanwhile after spending tens of billions and four decades what we have is a 1000 MW nuclear power plant, and i assure you that's only a shop front so they can argue enriching uranium and making centrifuges are necessary to fuel the plant.

Iran has 2nd largest natural gas reserves in the world, because of sanctions Iran has lost lots foreign investments it needed to sell it and/or use it to generate electricity. Natural gas costs peanuts in Iran.

We could've made a deal with a foreign company and ask them to build and fuel the power plant for 1/4th of the price and 5 times the capacity like our neighbours (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant)

just in case you don't know, fuel for nuclear power plant is the cheapest item in the bill when you are building one. There is no economic benefit (and lots of disadvantage) to start from scratch and enrich your own fuel.

I don't want a regime who shuts down an airliner and deny it for 3 days have access to nuclear weapons.

do not believe a word from the regime who is killing its own people all the time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_prot...)

As an Iranian, what do you think about the current political regime. Would a return of the Shah be a positive thing, in your opinion? Do you have any fears of Israeli aggression, or would you support a peace deal? I would honestly like to hear what you think about it.

UPDATE: spelling.

There are more then a million Israeli Arabs who enjoy full citizenship rights. I fact, they enjoy more rights then the average Israeli, being able to enter West Bank freely.

> I fact, they enjoy more rights then the average Israeli, being able to enter West Bank freely.

I wouldn't go that far. Yes, Israeli Arabs technically have full rights. Yes, technically speaking they might be able to go to places non-Arabs "can't".

But that's being really "technically correct". I think for day-to-day living, Israeli Arabs effectively have a worse time living in Israeli than Israeli Jews (e.g. there is at least some racism, unfortunately, there are certainly differences in funding in e.g. Arab schools vs Jewish schools from what I know, etc).

Current political regime the most dishonest, corrupt and dysfunctional regime you can imagine.

First thing you need to know is the government itself in Iran is nobody, Ali Khamenei has been enjoying full power and control for the past 30 years or so. Iran's president and minsters can only be appointed by Khamenei's approval.

With him being in power he needed a royal force to follow his ideology and shut down any voice of criticism, that's IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).

IRGC and Khamenei control as much as 50% of Iran's economy, from telecom to oil. needless to say they don't answer to anyone, they don't pay any taxes and Khameni itself doesn't even do any interviews with the press.

I think majority of Iranians hate the current regime as much as i do, for one, It's not possible to change it democratically. One person has all the power in country and he made a powerful force to back him up.

every time Iranians want to change the country, Khameni unleash his dogs (IRGC) and they either kill all the protestors or arrest them and sentence them to long term prison. I've been shot and spent time in Iran's political prison (Evin), my crime? participation in peaceful protests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Green_Movement)

> Would a return of the Shah be a positive thing?

Return of the Shah, reminds of me Russians who are envy of the soviet union time, because things were better at the time. I personally think democracy is the best way to go and no one person should have majority of the power.

> Do you have any fears of Israeli aggression, or would you support a peace deal

Enemy of my enemy is my friend, that's how I (and honestly majority of the people that i know) think of Israel. I think at the moment, Israel is the only country in the world stopping the regime from developing nuclear weapons and that's a good thing.

Iranians and Israelis historically have been friendly, Its only since this regime got the power that has changed, and i do understand why, because Iran has been threatening to wipe Israel off the map almost everyday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdxxVxtHK2M

> This is a complete fabrication and lie. As bad as it gets. Iran never said it is going to wipe another country. What they said is explained clearly in detail here [1].

It's not, Iran has been saying it very publicly:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran

https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-general-salami-threatens-to...

you should be able to read Farsi, so check these 2 example out of many:

https://cdn.yjc.ir/files/fa/news/1396/4/5/6417989_951.jpg

https://newsmedia.tasnimnews.com/Tasnim/Uploaded/Image/1396/...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B2%D8%B4%D9%...

These photos show the counters installed in every city in Iran, counting down how many down days left to destroy Israel. eg wipe it off the map.

If the most powerful actor in Iran is proposing a peaceful referendum, wouldn't you agree that this is some very mixed messaging then?

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/424343/Ayatollah-Khamenei-R...

Update: Spelling

I usually hear this what-aboutism argument from the people who benefit from current undemocratic regime.

If another country did/do something wrong, that doesn't justify Iran's actions. everyone is responsible for their own action and the reality is current Iranian regime has killed many thousands of it's own citizens.

Iran shutting the plane down and denying for 3 days is not justifiable by any means.

out of curiosity, what is your opinion on 1500 protesters who died during 2019-2020 protests? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Iranian_prot...

should we ignore this too because Israel also killed bunch of people?

UPDATE: spelling.

> It is ironic how the number decreased from 1500 to 300 in recent report

even if a single person dies, that matters.

toning it down to 300 doesn't make it look better. each one of them is a human who was killed by Iranian regime.

here is Reuters confirming that number https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-protests-specialrepo...

I don’t support the Iranian government, but I also think it was shocking that one of their Generals was assassinated by the US while visiting a friendly nation, Iraq. And Iran’s state terrorism in Iraq, Syria, etc., is to me hard to distinguish meaningfully from that of the US in Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. Somewhat similarly for Israel.

Wow, that’s horrifying.

I don't. He is not a General. He was the head of the IRGC, which is a proscribed terrorist organization. The IRGC is the biggest terrorist organization in the world, which arguably makes Solameini the biggest terrorist in the world.

So, on the one side we have Iran killing it's own civilians, Iraqi civilians, Syrian civilians, Yemeni civilians etc on a large scale. The annihilation of the entire Israeli state is also on their wish list. Men, women and children. Driven into the sea.

On the other side, we have the United States, taking out a terrorist chief, and a handful of terrorist bodyguards with an airstrike.

It is hard for me to draw any sort of meaningful comparison between Iran's terrorism in the Middle East and the response of the United States to their threats. Somewhat similarly for Israel.

There is something I don't understand, all that happened 8000 km away from USA, how is Iran a thread to the United States exactly?

I was not going to write anything, but the "killing of Iraqi civilians" comment, without a trace of irony, made me.

>8000 km away from USA, how is Iran a thread to the United States exactly?

I'm confused. He is quantifiably one of the most evil people on the planet, with a long list of human right abuses. Yet, what business is it of the United States to kill him?

He's responsible for the death of thousands but you want America to turn the other way. And then America kills one person, suddenly you are calling them out?

(yes, i am making a moral argument. No it's not the strongest answer. But it's a) the most compelling b) i'm not a general, but i'm sure there are plenty of strategic reasons too).

The “he was a bad guy” argument is one of the weakest. There are objectively “badder” guys that are current or recent US allies.

The Biden administration refused to even sanction MbS after signing off on a report that he is responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. I suggest you have a look at the last hundred years or so of Central and South American history for a wealth of awful examples, but you can look at I think any continent except Antarctica.

In case this was interpreted as “what about-ism”, my point is rather that “he was a bad guy” is rarely a significant factor in foreign military intervention in the west. It is usually just a rationalization.

Iran backed groups had literally shelled americans like a week or so before.

And where did this happen again?

While visiting a militia in that "friendly" nation. Said militia was attacking US troops with Iranian assistance. So I don't find it all that shocking. You want to help people kill our troops? Don't be surprised if we have something kinetic to say about that.

The Iraq War can be reasonably argued to be the worst “destabilization” in the region in the new century. Anything Iran has done _in its own region_ pales in comparison, and Iraq is indeed a “friendly” nation to Iran in the sense of being an ally. Two days after the assassination, the Iraqi parliament voted for a resolution that urges the government to work on expelling US troops from Iraq. That’s not massively concrete but AFAIK is representative of the Iraqi govt’s feelings on who is a greater offender in “destabilizing the region”.

So when someone does it to the US it is also totally fine?

> because of sanctions Iran has lost lots foreign investments

> could've made a deal with a foreign company

Pick one.

Look at what happens to middle eastern countries -- actually, ANY country -- that doesn't have a nuclear deterrent and doesn't support the Western mode of governing/economics. Hint: it's what happened in Iran in 1953.

Nukes means a conventional strike by Israel with the option for further nuclear preemptive strikes.

If the US could somehow talk them down, the US ally (Saudi Arabia) would be disadvantaged against the Russian one. This necessitates either removing the nukes or arranging for the Saudis to get some.

Iran’s pursuit of nukes is easily one of the most destabilizing power projection attempts in the region.

History proves without a doubt that having a nuclear arsenal is by far the most stabilizing event than can happen. No one goes up against someone with nukes without holding back. Israel opened Pandora's box when they got their own nukes. So if Iran's attempt is the most destabilizing event today it's clear what caused it. The correct response would be to force Israel to back down and have their sites monitored and only then is it possible to talk to Iran without talking down to them as if they are children. But I'm sure the US would rather give nukes to one of the worst countries in area than go against Israeli wishes.

Israel had nuclear weapons back in 1966. They could have used them when attacked during the 6-day war (a war they almost lost). They could have used them during the following three year war of attrition. They could have used them when attacked during the Yom-Kippur War. The fact that they did not and have never used them as a negotiation tactic since acquiring them shows that Israeli nukes aren't destabilizing the region.

Israel hasn't started up wars with its neighbors since its creation (we'll set aside terrorists in Palestine for another conversation sufficing to say that's definitely not a war). Iran has gone to war with almost everyone around at some point during that same 75 year period of time with a total body count in the millions.

Finally, nukes only make sense for stability if you take religion off the table. Iranian leaders have called repeatedly, publicly, and recently for the annihilation of Israel. Don't forget that it was prophesied that things on this earth won't wrap up until there's a massive war in which the Jews are exterminated.

This is all before discussing how Iran and Saudi Arabia are carrying on a proxy power struggle between Russia and the United States.

You are missing the point. That Israel have nukes are holding others back, not Israel. I haven't said anything about Israel going to war.

Many countries will think "If our biggest enemy has nukes we better get them ourself" which is one of the reasons that Iran wants nukes: To hold off Israel.

It's pretty clear that you have feelings invested in this and are picking sides which is understandable with the history of Iran and Israel but it doesn't change the facts that having nukes is most often a stabilizing event in a region (while the process up until they acquire them likely isn't) and if Iran trying to get nukes is a destabilizing event then the cause of this instability is not only that Iran wants nukes but also that others already have them and they now want them too which causes extreme tension especially in the country that already have them. This is the pattern we normally see.

>This is all before discussing how Iran and Saudi Arabia are carrying on a proxy power struggle between Russia and the United States.

Yes and again we know from history how this will likely play out. We actually have a very good example of what happens in a very unstable proxy situation when one side decides to add nuclear weapons into the mix: Korea. The armistice clearly stated No Nukes and since one side added nuclear weapons (the US broke the armistice by importing nuclear weapons into South Korea) we have seen the pariah (NK) doing exactly what Iran is doing: doing everything it can to get weapons that can stop the perceived enemy from being able to destroy them and yelling about destruction of the big enemy (which is mainly targeted at their own population).

So if history teaches us anything it is IMO that Iran will either get nuclear weapons and it will cause stability OR it will not and instability will never stop growing until full on war breaks out at which point Iran as we know it will either be destroyed or the cycle will reset.

Your argument is wrong on the merits alone. If Communists in the US hadn’t stolen designs for the USSR, then proliferation could have been slowed or possibly prevented.

Nukes on both sides led to a decades long Cold War that cost real lives and by all rights should have gone hot several times. UK or French nukes didn’t stabilize Europe nor make the USSR (or any other country I’m aware of) less likely to attack them.

Pakistan and India continue to wage a Cold War hoping that the fundamentalists in Pakistan don’t gain too much power. The situation is just as unstable as before.

Nukes in the PRK haven’t made the situation more stable. All peace deals were unrelated. In truth, the real threat has always been the hundreds of guns pointed at Seoul. They’ve actually destabilized relations with countries like Japan which has slowly moved toward arming again.

That leaves just PRC. You could make the case that it stabilized the fighting between India and China to some degree, but fighting and border disputes still continues to cause suffering and death. It certainly hasn’t done a thing to lessen tensions with the rest of the South Pacific or the US where tensions simply continue to climb.

Can you point to any places where the nine nuclear countries have stabilized regions because of nukes?

The going theory is that these proclamations when attributed to religious proclamations (Fatwa) versus policy statements are examples of Taqiya. This view is not without controversy as some claim it's just dog-whistling Islamophobia.

However I think a more nuanced view is that Iran is both a nation state as well as a religious state, so (like all nation states) it will protect it's interests however it needs to which will include deception. Whether anyone thinks that the deception is primarily stemming from religious or secular instinct is an exercise for the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiya

> nuclear disarmament in the region (effectively meaning just Israeli disarmament)

Iran shares a border with Pakistan, which shares borders with India, which shares borders with China, which shares borders with Russia and NK (all nuclear powers). Why don't you want to disarm them too ?

> It's in almost everyone's interest to keep Iran from getting nukes.

It’s in almost everyone’s interest, absent complete regional disarmament in WMD, for someone other than Israel in the region to get nukes, and Iran is probably the least-bad option.

OTOH, it would reduce the possibility of eventually convincing Israel to go the South Africa route, but its dubious whether that can be managed anyway, short of a similar trigger, which doesn’t seem likely in Israel for both demographic and geopolitical reasons.

There is a bit of a sweet feeling: Sabotage can be mostly done without victims where the only collateral is equipment. Please do not see this as validating this specific sabotage itself, but with such scenarios at least we might have reduced human suffering part of our existence.

This (and the recent ish attack on the IRGC ship) is most likely the doing of Israel to prevent the JCPOA from being reestablished and from Iran getting any sanctions relief.

If Iranian lawmakers believe these attacks were by the US (they possibly do believe that), they will be less willing to enter an agreement with the US, and Israel furthers it's goal of isolating it's adversary, Iran.

Israel is clearly enjoying a great moment for inflicting damage on its arch-enemy. If Iran reacts, it's going to get the blame for attacking (because history always begins after Israel's latest offensive action) and the US will find a much hoped for excuse not to re-enter the nuclear deal. So Iran can only endure the humiliation and suck it up. So far they've shown an incredible patience.

I am going to have to disagree. Iran recently attacked an Israeli ship, but more importantly it continues to arm terrorist groups (note I am Israeli, so I am probably not objective here, but yes I believe Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups. Some of you may think differently on that. We can agree to disagree) that are against Israel’s existence. Those groups are constantly either attacking or trying to attack Israel.

Now you can argue Israel is also attacking those groups and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s almost impossible to figure out who started each round. We only ever hear a very small part of the story.

It is a circle of violence that will hopefully one day end.

> it continues to arm terrorist groups

That's all the US does, day and night. And they even say this publicly (although always implying that it is a good thing).

Iran and Israel used to be friend, but Israel nationalize Irans asset on Israel and didn't pay back oil they took from Iran, Iran got mad that Israel stole their things and now they are sworn enemies.

Iran and Israel stopped being friends after the Islamic revolution when Iran’s government declared Israel is a sworn enemy.

Hopefully one day that will change and we can be friends again as no one gains from the conflict.

A democratic Iran will always be the enemy of Israel.

Israel is a nuclear-armed ethnostate engaging in ethnic cleansing that protects these transgressions by operating as the FOB of the hegemonic world power that doesn't blink an eye at killing a million citizens in the region.

So long as Israel requires US support to safeguard their otherwise untenable position (and to force Arab dictatorships to act favorably towards Israel), Iran and Israel will be opposed.

Iran and Israel were allied before the revolution because the undemocratic government (not that the current one is anymore democratic otherwise) that was willing to act against its interests on the matter so long as the dominant foreign powers required it.

It's categorically false that no one gains from the conflict. Israel gains tremendously from the conflict as the antagonism between Iran and Israel and between Iran and the USA is what justifies its ability to get away with so much.

> A democratic Iran will always be the enemy of Israel.

Not really. They have nothing to quarrel about.

But there is nothing democratic about today's Iran. Theocratic fascists on the other hand need an enemy to distract from complete failure of internal politics and collapsing economy due to spending all their resources on war and funding criminals and terrorists abroad.

>But there is nothing democratic about today's Iran. Theocratic fascists on the other hand need an enemy to distract from complete failure of internal politics and collapsing economy due to spending all their resources on war and funding criminals and terrorists abroad.

I explicitly said they weren't. You're preaching for the choir.

>Not really. They have nothing to quarrel about.

Democratic states still have geopolitical interests. The interests of Israel are vehemently opposed to those of Iran. Thus, Iran and Israel will be in conflict. In fact, foreign policy-wise, democratic states are barely different from dictatorships.

Democratic Iran won't have interest in spreading war and chaos all around unlike what IRG (that basically runs Iran today) is doing now. So what kind of interests will they have conflicting then?

Countries pursue war to advance their interests. Iran funds proxies and political parties abroad to be able to maintain sufficient influence on its neighbours to prevent the advancement of US interests and to prevent them from attacking Iran, as well as to destabilize some gulf states.

Democracies are just as warmongering as any other. The US and most European countries didn't see any issue in bombing Syria and Libya back to slavery, so why do you think democratic Iran will be any better?

Simple reason - constant war mongering isn't something politicians will be supported for because the price for that is going on the people. That is, if politicians have to answer to anyone (thus democracy).

Dictatorships on the other hand don't care about squeezing their own populations to the bone for their war mongering. Well, until the point there is an uprising of course and they are burned down by the angry mob.

I see you have called Israel an 'ethnostate' several times on here. Have you ever visited Israel? I see jewish, druze, christian/muslim arabs,bedouin, russian/orthodox, eritrean, somali, etc etc every day. I think you would have a much different opinion if you visited. I am not jewish and I have full citizenship and rights.

I call every country which, on their constitution, proclaims themselves to belong to a specific ethnic group to be an ethnostate.

I live in Canada. If the constitution of this country specifically said it wasn't for me I would not accept that. If you disagree, that is your right.

are the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic republic of pakistan ethnostates?

also what are their gay pride parades like, and whats their policy on censorship, capital punishment,etc?

The first are theocracies, but both Iran and Pakistan are officially multiethnic states. Not that theocracies are much better than ethnostate.

As for the other, those are orthogonal to the issues.

You are literally just doing whataboutism, but even worse because you're not whatabouting at the right people.

This makes no sense. My roommate is an christian arab, he has the exact same rights as I do, only he didn't have to do national service or military. The Russians that run the grocery store are orthodox christians, they also have rights, bedouins, druze, the eritrian coptic christians, ethiopian jews, jews from literally every corner of the world and of every race, who knows what some of the georgian guys religion is who make pastries down the street. There are so many ethnicities in Israel, and so many religions. I can't blame you because you have never been to Israel and have no idea the type of people that live here, you just have big opinions from the obvious propaganda you have been spoonfed, otherwise you would never say something like "Israel is an ethnostate" .

> Iran recently attacked an Israeli ship

I think you already tried to say it, but remember Iran attacked an Israeli ship after 12 attacks to Iranians ships in 2020 by Israel. And 4 other Iranian ships were attacked in 2021 which two of them happened after Iran tried to retaliate by attacking an Israeli ship.

Israel clearly believes that the best defense is a good offense, but that strategy makes it harder to have any dialogue or peace.

Let's also remember Iran attacked Saudi Arabia directly not too long ago.

They are hardly the victim.

This is a non-sequitur. Irani-Saudi relations have nothing to do with Irani-Israeli relations.

> the US will find a much hoped for excuse not to re-enter the nuclear deal.

Can you elaborate? All the indications I've seen clearly point to the US wanting to reenter the deal. Biden denounced Trumps withdrawal numerous times during the campaign and vowed to bring the US back into the agreement. It was part of his presidential platform that he ran on, and he lifted several sanctions put in place by the Trump Administration on Iran when he initially got in office (first 2 weeks). If the US really wanted an excuse to stay out, this seems an odd way of going about it vs not saying anything at all and silently continuing Trump's policies.

Iran very much need the money. Iran will show patience as long as it's needed to unblock the money they have in foreign banks.

Once that's done, they'll use that money to make more missiles and arm the militia in middle east.

If you look at the history this theory seems quite rational. Israel has the most to gain RIGHT NOW, and while others have something to gain too (e.g. Saudi Arabia), they lack Israel's technical prowess.

It is really up to the US, if they want the JCPOA to move forward, to try and corral Israel (or better bring them in so they're fully onboard with JCPOA).

I have to say that I'm not seeing a ton of evidence that the US really wants to go forward with the JCPOA. The "adhere to the old agreement and then we'll come to the table" position seems designed to be unacceptable to Iran.

It's designed to partially neutralize partisan attacks from the right. I expect diplomatic discussions are far more substantive and nuanced, while the executives figure out how to manage the optics of an agreement.

Well, if that’s what they’re thinking, surely they have to take into account that Iran has its own hawks who oppose a new deal in the first place and will surely seize on a narrative of national humiliation.

JCPOA failing means no IAEA inspections. I don’t understand Israel’s rational around stopping the IAEA inspections if they don’t want Iran as a nuclear power.

If Israel cared about the risk of Iran becoming a nuclear power, then the JCPOA would have been gold for them. No, I think nuclear weapons are just a great excuse to isolate Iran from the international community and destroy its economy. If you have a quarrel with your neighbour, do you prefer him to be rich and respected or poor and ignored?

Proof is, again, that the strongest campaigner against keeping Iran's nuclear research under strict checks has always been Israel.

IaEA weren't allowed to inspect military sites, sampling done by Iranians then sent to IaEA. It was a joke of an agreement.

Has any country developed nuclear weapons with inspectors present?

How would we know if inspectors don’t?

The inspectors are not present

Monitoring some military sites wasn't part of it, unlike their nuclear facilities which were monitored 24/7 by IAEA. However, the IAEA inspectors could still request access to military locations. So it was kind of on-demand, but Iran had the right to refuse.

I'm not an expert, but most of the experts said it was the most comprehensive inspections regime on their supply chain, and any location in Iran except a few military sites which they could still request access.

The goal was to start cooperation and also the idea was to help an already weakened political party in Iran which is in favor of partnership with the west to gain more success, popularity, and public support, so over time the more conservative and anti-west parties and figures would lose their power and influence.

But we just gave their conservative parties the easiest propaganda excuse ("They don't honor their own agreement.").

Iran is actually quite reactive if you read their history. Iran is the devil we made, so everyone can make money out of it. Can you even count how much worth of arms sells are going to the Middle East every year? Not to mention oil market is on the table too. And those that are making big money will lobby everywhere to make sure that Iran remains "the threat". Peace with Iran isn't financially clever.

Let’s not forget that Iran had and possibly still have undeclared nuclear facilities

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-u-n-inspectors-find-radioa...

Do you think any country would just allow foreign inspectors unfettered access to all of their most restricted sites, a lot of them with a military function?

Heck, the US doesn't even allow ICC inspectors into the country to interview possible witnesses to war crimes [0] or UN inspectors into domestic prisons [1]. Do you think the US would let any supranational organization just freely tour its military bases and nuclear facilities?

Yet when Iran wants that same respect for it's sovereignty, then that's somehow made out as some kind of evidence for their allegedly evil and sinister intentions.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-icc-idUSKCN1QW1ZH

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idU...

Israel is not against a nuclear agreement in principal. They want to make sure it has enough teeth that it can and will be enforced and that it doesn’t expire like the current one does.

This is the same reason most of the gulf states are against the nuclear deal in its current form.

Do you have a source where I could read more about Israel’s goals with the JCPOA? Even with the sun setting, the idea seems to be to keep reimplementing a new agreement under threat of future sanctions, just like you refi a TLB, and the Israelis should understand this.

Iran has military ties and grants aid to Hezbollah and Bashar Al Asad the Syrian dictator (both are neighboring enemies of Israel), has missiles that could potentially threaten Israel, and has publicly threatened death and hellfire upon Israel.

I am certain that nuclear weapons or not, Israel considers Iran enemy #1 and a real threat to be dealt with. A stronger Iran (via sanctions relief) is not in their interest.

I did some digging and it seems both countries have been threatening each other for decades. Israel has repeatedly blocked their nuclear program and has threatened offensive action if it continues. Not just recently but even in an article from 2006.

It seems both sides are throwing threats around and it seems unfair to only mention Iran’s threats.

https://m.dw.com/en/israel-threatens-iran-over-nuclear-resea...

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-israel-iran-iran-nuclea...

The discussion is about Israel’s rationale - not whether or not Iran’s aggression is justified.

"it seems unfair to only mention Iran’s threats"

If that's unfair, then it is also unfair to leave out the fact that the Iranian government has murdered innocent US citizens and funded organizations that seek to murder large numbers of innocent US civilians. We should also mention the two countries differing views on religious freedom and women's rights, or even their differing views on the others right to exist.

Israel is built on the suffering of the Palestinians, taking their land and homes by force in the 1940's, but why didn't Iran take those displaced people in if they were so concerned about them? Or any other of the loudly protesting states that surround Israel? The answer is that the Mullahs only really care about holding on to the power they have, and just like the elite in the US like to use racism to distract from wealth inequality, so too do the Mullahs use Israel to distract Iranians from the fact that Iranian government isn't actually very good at its job of providing a peaceful, prosperous life of freedom for it's citizens.

It seems a real pity that such a wonderful people like the Persians must live under a feudal, fundamentalist religious dictatorship in the 21st century. That must really suck.

My guess is that if there is ever going to be an Islamic Reformation, it will happen in the US or Iran, and it will make the Arab Spring look like a blip on the radar, and it will be wonderful.

I'm really glad you mentioned innocent US citizens. Have you heard of Rachel Corrie murdered by the IDF?

No, but I'm talking about the official position of the Iranian government is to destroy America and kill Americans. This equivocating about Israel vs. Iran's moral status, from the American point of view, is rather sickening.

But then again, in 2016 we recently proved that 40% of Americans have a good chance of walking out of Star Wars believing that Darth Vader was the good guy. So what do I know?

Darth Vader is leading an imperial army fighting terrorists. I guess some might find some similarities in the real world. Not to mention the politics remind me of something..

Indeed. Darth Vader stands for purity, civilization, order. He's a go-getter: he's got a job to do, he does it and doesn't let anything stand in his way. By contrast the rebellion is all about chaos. Indeed, if only the rebels would stop their vain attempt to overthrow the just and good Empire, then all could enjoy peace!

Too many drugs..

The exact nature of her death and the culpability of the bulldozer operator are disputed, with fellow ISM protestors saying that the Israeli soldier operating the bulldozer deliberately ran over Corrie, and Israeli eyewitnesses saying that it was an accident since the bulldozer operator could not see her.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

Taking the names/policies/abuses of given countries out of the equation I would hardly consider it "threatening each other" where:

Country 1: Has actually threatened multiple times of wiping Country 2 off the map, all the while developing advanced military capabilities and sometimes unveiling them with writings on them of wiping Country 1 off.

Country 2: Has been threatening (and delivering) consequences to Country 1 over nuclear research and other offensive activities they have undertaken.

One of the big regrets of the arms control community, was that the JCPOA did not contain any limitations on missile development.

With the current arms race with drones, missiles, hypersonic missiles, etc... I think Israel is worried that Iran will begin handing these weapons out to their proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and escalate the war.

Iran's drone strike against Saudi Arabia's top oil refinery really highlighted that.

I think ensuring that no deal is better than the current format of the JCPOA. At least in the current situation, they can strike at Iran's weapons program to slow it down, and that there are no major inflows of money.

Personally, I think they'd be open to a new JCPOA that includes broader weapons controls.

What's even more strange is that at one stage even some high ranking members of the Israeli military saw the benefits of the nuclear deal.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-militar...

They obviously don’t believe that IAEA inspections are very effective. Considering that Israel has made nukes of their own... they would know.

They did so without IAEA inspectors monitoring them and significant help from the west. UK provided samples of plutonium and highly enriched lithium for nuclear weapons.

I am not aware of any countries that have developed nukes while under NPT with active inspections. North Korea kicked out their inspectors and it took them 3 years after that to get a bomb.

No IAEA inspections means Bibi can once again entertain the UN with cartoon bombs without getting any serious headwind.

Throw in IAEA inspections and that whole rhetoric out of Israel becomes much less believable and might even reflect badly on Israel itself when the IAEA inspections show them to be not true.

"I don’t understand Israel’s rational "

It's simple - in their estimation, the net totality of the inspections + enforcement policy has value.

If there are no inspections Israel can make up whatever story it wants and act accordingly, as there won't be any neutral party to contradict it and Israel figures it has more diplomatic allies than Iran.

I have no idea if this is what's happening; it's just a possible strategic rationale.

Actively working against US foreign policy goals seems to be a pretty egregious act. If proven true, that seems like it would seriously erode or destroy the US alliance with Israel. There's a lot of institutional weight towards support of Israel, but that action would make them an enemy of US foreign interests.

Republicans will never back down on Israel, regardless of how they affect out policies.

you do know that the support of israel in US politics is completely bipartisan, right?

If not, you should read up on AIPAC and who speaks at their events year after year.

It is, and they promulgate a complete fiction on the importance of keeping Israel close to the US

Tell them to go cozy up to Russia, make good on that ‘threat’, have fun with that

Sort of. The "Patriot" Right and the "Progressive" Left are less pro-Israel than the mainstream Republicans and Democrats that cater to the donor class (and Republicans who cater to the Armageddon-seeking class.)

what the policy makers actually say behind closed doors may be very different from their public statements. And i imagine the State Department, being a human agency, don't have a single, moonlithic, agenda.

US is divided internally on how to go forward with the JCPOA. Assuming it was Israel, I don't think the government could muster up enough support to punish a long-time ally for something like this .

"a 2013 National Intelligence Estimate on cyber threats “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US” behind only China and Russia" [1]

"Israel among the U.S.’s most threatening cyber-adversaries and as a “hostile” foreign intelligence service." [2]

"Israel’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal" [3]

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-is...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-spied-on-iran-talks-1427...

Eh it kind of makes sense. Of course they’re going to do their best to spy on America when so much depends on how Americans and their government feel about Israel.

They aren't just spying for info. They are spying to manipulate US policy. so they should be more careful about how the US electorate feels about them.

Well, yea. They're going to try and manipulate American policy because so much rides on how Americans feel about Israel. Certainly they should be careful to not stir up angst and get cut off.

I'd also like to add that this is unfortunately very common. Everybody in the world wants Americans to think a certain way because of the amount of military and economic power the country wields. This ranges from "come visit Mexico" to "the Palestinians are terrorists" to China using Tik Tok (or Russian disinformation campaigns against vaccines) to manipulate people into pro-X stances.

The whole world has turned into an ad.

I suspect most of the US intelligence community is happy with the attack if it successfully destroyed some of Iran's nuclear capability.

It actually increases the likelihood that they will rejoin the JCPOA under the original limits.

Keep in mind that "cyber attack" can be a cover for other types of attack.

It creates this convenient image of "hackers press a button and things blow up" to divert attention away from the reality.

I wouldn't be so quick in believing it being a cyber attack.

Wouldn't both the perpetrator and the victim have to be in on that deception? Why would both parties go along with that?

That's not quite what happened. First, Iran blamed it on cyberattack, then Israeli media took credit for it, because why the hell would they not? It's also not even confirmed, just assumed:

> Israeli public broadcaster Kan said that it could be assumed that the incident was an Israeli cyber operation, citing the discovery in 2010 of the Stuxnet computer virus

>That's not quite what happened.

I wasn't saying one way or another what happened. But a physical military attack by Israel would be much more frowned on by the international community than a cyberattack. In that situation, what motivation is there for Iran to conceal that to the benefit of Israel?

Hmm, well I assume it is a bit shameful to get hacked on the very day it opens, especially after the whole Stuxnet kerfuffle, so they may want to underplay the damage done.

It makes one seem mighty, and it makes the other not seem as incompetent. If the attack was 'unprecedented', or 'unexpected' or 'sophisticated' then the people responsible from the victim's team are absolved of their failures and mistakes while the other side gets to look good and mighty.

But doesn't the "we weren't expecting it" excuse work much better for a physical attack? You always have to be vigilant of a cyberattack. It is neither "unprecedented" or "unexpected". Meanwhile the victim usually receives very little blame after a sneak military attack. "Israel launched an unprovoked military attack against a non-military target" seems like it would play better both domestically and internationally than what basically amounts to "they outsmarted us".

Certain kinds of attacks really are just that, unexpected, even if they are cyber attacks. See for example the recent attack against the US. The media was quick to praise the attack as unprecedented and sophisticated, when in reality, it wasn't anywhere close to something like stuxnet.

It can also be a cover for no attack.

The blackout happened when a previously unused part of the site was being brought online it could’ve been simply a normal fault.

Calling it a cyber attack may be beneficial for both parties, the administrators of the site get to save face, and the Israelis would happily take credit unofficially because they know that it would cause a longer delay because now the Iranians will be scrubbing their networks.

If they’ll also be replacing some equipment such as PLCs it opens the site to future attacks if any entity has the ability to compromise the supply chain.

Keep in mind it's also considered an act of war, not the first such attack on Iran and their scientists.

I see in the comments here that most of the talk has devolved to israel/palestinian conflicts or Israel/Iran conflicts, mostly with a lot of bad energy.

I am Israeli and last winter I spent 3 months living in Istabul doing coke/drinking/clubbing with a bunch of Iranian guys who left Tehran to make money and find opportunities in Istanbul. Turkey is one of the few countries they can go to easily. They all knew I was Israeli and they never cared, I met several groups of Iranians in my time spent there and they all had several things in common. They loved to party, they didn't care about Israel at all, and wanted to escape the theocratic clerics that enforced all the rules on them.

There is very much a huge portion of young Iranians that have big secret parties and participate in music and things the government does not allow. And I dont think the current regime can keep this up forever. Sometimes I get angry at social media, because everywhere I travel to now compared to 15 years ago seems like it is becoming the same, like all the cultures are just melting together into some kind of Instagram/narcissist thing, but in this case, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, I believe it is pulling the young into some kind of societal/cultural reform. Because everyone really just wants to have a good time.

I think the title is misleading. I do not see anything in the article confirming it was a cyber attack. Only media organizations claiming that it could be.

I agree. Maybe a prefix of “claimed” or “alleged” or “assumed” would help.

These are the strongest claims I found backing it in the article:

“Israeli media suggest the incident was a result of an Israeli cyber attack.”

“A nuclear facility in Iran was hit by a "terrorist act" a day after it unveiled new advanced uranium centrifuges, a top nuclear official says.”

“Later state TV read out a statement by AEOI head Ali Akbar Salehi, in which he described the incident as "sabotage" and "nuclear terrorism".”

“Ron Ben-Yishai, a defence analyst at the Ynet news website, said that with Iran progressing towards nuclear weapons capability it was "reasonable to assume that the problem... might not have been caused by an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on removing sanctions".”

And background given that 1) a cyber attack, stuxnet, has happened here in the past and 2) recent actions by Iran incentives an action like this occurring again.

How hard is it to enrich uranium, really? It was done previously with 1940s technology. No computers required really.

Pretty hard. But the enrichment isn’t even the hardest part, just tedious. Iran has had the knowledge and equipment for several years. But it takes time to produce enough material to be useful, and they keep getting sabotaged. Not just the equipment, but top leaders and scientists get killed from time to time.

Keep in mind that the Manhattan Project employed over 100,000 people and cost a couple billion dollars, which would be tens of billions of dollars after inflation. Iran has been under sanctions of varying strictness for a few decades. That amount of people and money isn’t trivial to them like it is to the USA in 1940, which was a rising superpower.

And the Manhattan Project only managed to enrich enough uranium for one bomb.

But they had no trouble making two bombs to drop on japan?

The other bomb dropped on Japan used plutonium, as did the Trinity nuclear test. (Yes, the US had so little uranium that the bomb design using it wasn't even tested before it was used against Japan.)

I'm pretty certain they made way more than one, but even if not - that was a really inefficient design. Only a few percent of the input material actually achieved fission.

But that was with the technology available in 1940. I would imagine that this has become vastly simpler and cheaper since then.

What used to take rooms full of people with slide rules or state-of-the-art supercomputers can now be calculated on a Raspberry Pi in seconds. ABEC 9 ball bearings are disposable consumer goods that you can order by the 20-pack for $10. CNC machines went from non-existent to affordable by hobbyist groups.

Likewise, knowledge that used to be a state secret is now available in high school text books.

I can't imagine a Manhattan Project requiring anywhere near that amount of people and resources nowadays.

The Manhattan Project also used 10% of the US electricity capacity

If Iran got close to creating a Nuke wouldn't the US just bomb the site? Iran must surely know that it will not get away with building nukes either. So what are they doing?

Iran's bark is larger then it's bite. I think it just wants to use its nuclear activities as a bargaining chip for sanction relief.

So why should the US do anything at all regarding Iran? It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to.

Why doesn't it just refuse to negotiate and keep Iran poor?

Iran's military threat are, relatively, a mild annoyance, and calling their bluff and immediately escalating as trump did when he killed Soleimani seems to temper them as any escalation hurts them a lot more then it does the US.

I think when we treat Iran as a real threat, as we did with NK, it just gives them more legitimacy then they deserve.

> It can destroy those sites easily enough if it needs to.

Is it as simple as that? (1) There is a continuum from dirty bombs to full Nukes that makes it a bit more messy. (2) Are Nukes not more "hideable" than this? For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed?

> For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed?

Because of a country up north.

> > For example, why has NK not had theirs bombed?

> Because of a country up north.

...and another country down south as well. There are fifty million citizens of a country officially allied with America who would appreciate not having a nuclear war next door, thank you very much.

The size of the sites they need to make the nukes are not small. It's more a matter of Intellegence knowing whats going on there.

The issue with NK, to my understading, is that any action there would lead to SK ( A densely populated country) being attacked with a lot regular missiles that would be hard to prevent.

I'm pretty sure US will do nothing if Iran will come up with a nuke, nor will it change anything in the region at large.

Pre-Syrian-war balance of power was such that any neighbouring power had material resources to flatten Israel few times over, with, or without nuclear weapons, sans the small detail of their military leadership being a complete joke.

> wouldn't the US just bomb the site?

Iran's critical sites are well bunkerized. It's not clear that any non-nuclear attack would get through.

It is odd...

Iran has lots of energy resources, is a huge energy exporter, and has a ton of heavy polluting industry...but they are also investing heavily in nuclear energy? Odd.

Western oil companies have invested heavily in solar power. It's a hedge against peak oil and/or global CO2 restrictions.

Nuclear energy is a clear path to eco-friendly future. Everyone is interested with that, nobody wants to burn oil even if you have plenty of that oil. I live in Kazakhstan, we have plenty of oil, gas and coal, but we want to build nuclear plants, we are experimenting with wind and solar generators, nobody likes to breath dirty air.

Sarcasm. Iran are, amazingly for such a small economy, a massive polluter and they would rather drop dead then stop selling oil (fighter jets don't pay for themselves, the military owns most of their economy).

My point is: the nuclear industry exists to make weapons. That is it. It is baffling that other nations pretend otherwise (for example, the EU seems quite happy to pretend that Iran's massive interest in nuclear technology is for civilian purposes...unf, countries in the EU have a long record of supplying countries in the region with "civilian" technology that was later used to murder people).

That might be true for Iran. But I don't see it as an issue, because obviously Iran wants to do so to protect them from foreign invasion, just like North Korea managed to get in position where nobody would want to risk invading them. It's not an ideal situation where one should get deadliest weapon ever to bring peace to the country, but at least it seems to work.

That would be a correct theory if you assumed that Iran is a rational actor. There is no evidence this is the case.

I would actually argue that NK is a fairly rational actor, if a slightly volatile one. Their "enemy" is Emmanuel Goldstein, they understand the US won't invade them but it is useful for them to pretend they will.

If Iran got a nuclear weapon, they would use it. No questions, they used chemical weapons before, they have gassed and bombed civilians, they don't care anymore (btw, the theory you are proposing was suggested before...Boris Johnson suggested it, he proposed giving a nuclear weapon to Iran, I studied IR, I am aware of the theory...it only works when a country has an incentive to not use nuclear weapons).

I wonder if it is Israel again. Maybe with the blessing of the US this time?

isn't stuxnet speculated to originate from the US and Israel ?

Yes - it is suspected to be a joint project. We will never really know though as neither side will ever admit to it.

Yes. John Bowden wrote a great book on this very virus and goes into details on this.

FYI, you appear to be shadowbanned.

How so? I can see their comment just fine, but I'm reading this on a 3rd party app.

I had to vouch for the comment to reply to it. I also looked back through the history and saw some perfectly acceptable comments showing as dead.

>Maybe with the blessing of the US this time?

Has Israel ever done anything without the US's blessing?

Just wondering.

Well, 40 years ago it attacked the Iraqi nuclear facility with the help of Iran and prevented Saddam from getting the bomb..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera

> On 7 June 1981, a flight of Israeli Air Force F-16A fighter aircraft, with an escort of F-15As, bombed the Osirak reactor deep inside Iraq.

Well, the fighter jets and weapons system platform (a pair of Mark-84 unguided bombs fitted to each aircraft) they used in those airstrikes were made by aerospace companies in the United States (General Dynamics and McDonnel Douglas), so I think American companies did have a role to play, however indirectly.

There's no denying Israel wouldn't exist today (at least not the form it presently exists) if not for the timely and generous support and assistance (militarily, monetarily and in spirit) from the United States of America -- just an observation!

Certainly. And Czechoslovakia. ;)

one of the rare occasions that Israel has taken independent action. From what i've read, some of Carters cabinet were furious but he refused to issue sanctions against Israel.

And another in Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box

And those are just the ones on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

> The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship.

You'd hope that was done without the US's blessing...

Planting cellphone-spying devices around the White House?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/12/israel-planted...

Although, judging from the consequences (none) you could say that even that had the US's blessings.

Developing nuclear weapons for one...

Why would Biden give the blessing now of all times, right before the deal. Why would he not wait and see how to deal goes first? The place just opened it's not like it'll pump out bombs within a day.

As ever Israel makes a strong Operational measure but a poor Strategic one. What exactly is the end game that it thinks is going to happen? There is zero scenario in which Iran is going to fully stop trying to build a nuke in the basement. The JPCOA is the only show in town.

You're absolutely right. The JCPOA is the only show in town.

What do you think Israel's good Strategic measure would be?

Make sure agreements and cooperation with the west is successful and help the vast majority of the public in Iran realize that working with the west is in their interest. Over time it will help the left parties in Iran to gain more power and influence than the conservative and anti-west figures. Once you have the public support, slowly and surely push them to have peace with Israel. They used to be allies together. So it shouldn't be impossible.

But, we just did the opposite. The anti-west parties now have an easy story to tell: "We tried, they lied, we shouldn't work with them.". We added sanctions too. An economy under sanction runs by military and gives more power to the military, because only they have the tools to interact with the black market and bypass sanctions. Not the liberal, open-minded Businessman which is more likely to support more interactions with the world.

Exactly. There are too many missed opportunities for bringing in Iran from the fold to mention.

Just a power outage? Sounds like just a one time issue that won’t have any material impact on their nuclear readiness?

Wished the article elaborated on the actual outcome of the attack

The Wikileaks and Snowden revelations showed that the NSA had tools to point the hacking at others like a false flag operation. With that knowledge in mind how can we ever conclusively blame anyone for a hacking attack as the proverbial smoking gun can even be placed in the victims hand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

Any computer, anywhere, can be hacked. As long as that remains true, nothing and nobody is safe.

The root cause of this insecurity is a bad trust model.

There are perverse incentives keeping people from using a different trust model.

The US Military Industrial Complex developed systems that are provable secure, but decided they didn't need to bother.

Perhaps it's time to reconsider?

An obvious question that comes up is: "When will these cyber attacks be properly considered what they are - an act of war?"

I frequently hear this question receiving top billing when some commercial entity here is the target of one.

A bit off topic, is there any hollywood movie on stuxnet incident?

I thought Biden wanted to re-enter the JCPOA agreement with Iran? Surely the Israelis wouldn't do something like this without having coordinated with the US if not directly ordered by the US ...

The Isrealis have always embraced being a bit of a loose cannon geopolitically. It's smart; it let's them punch oabove their weight if they're careful about it (which they normally are).

My bet is they did this with the US's knowledge, but not involvement or approval. Israel doesn't want Iran going into the JCPOA without their nuclear program being set back as far as possible to square one. The US knows that it's an uphill battle to get the Iranians at the table at all, and would defer dismantling of their nuclear program to the outcome of the negotiations.

Stuxnet 2.0

Nice. So JavaScript/Ajax frameworks?

MVC too

Now with GraphQL

stuxnext.js

Reminded of "What is the most sophisticated piece of software ever written?" on Quora.

Buckle in.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-o...

Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue

What?! So I can get my computer infected?!

I was eager for some insight into sophisticated software (either deep or funny - I was open for anything); I was greeted with a prompt to enable JavaScript. I still haven't been able to clean all the irony off my monitor.

Yea, that's what someone wrote on Quora, but Stuxnet isn't the most sophisticated piece of software ever written - let alone that it is not the most sophisticated exploit ever written.

Find me another program that requires knowledge more niche than nuclear refinement processes suitable for the production of weapons, and enough HUMINT to know what to target etc.

Stuxnet is probably not the most sophisticated program ever, but it's probably the most information dense.

> suitable for the production of weapons

Where have you seen any evidence that Stuxnet relied on information on production of nuclear weapons?

So you're saying they went to all that effort and then just picked a random number for what to spin the centrifuges up to? All they'd have to do is get a Nuclear Physicist from the weapons program in

No. I’m saying how do infer it was suitable for nuclear weapons production? The International Atomic Agency has the most stringent oversight on the Iranian nuclear program and there has been no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

It is not inference but deduction and knowledge. Iran has long said that they enrich 20% uranium and can enrich 60% if needed. 20% is the minimum needed for weapons-grade and is 4-6 times what is needed for civilian power. There were talks between the US and Iran in 2010 about lowering the enrichment levels.

20% is for medical isotopes not power. They can also export not just for domestic use. Good thing we don’t base international law on deduction.

You didn't read my comment. I definitely did not write that 20% is for power.

> Find me another program that requires knowledge more niche than nuclear refinement processes suitable for the production of weapons, and enough HUMINT to know what to target etc.

How does that add sophistication to the programming?

How doesn't it? Programming doesn't matter, even in a program that is classically sophisticated like a big compiler that's still only an implementation of an algorithm from a book rather than some divine poem that only exists in that compiler

I'd agree if you'd say that the Stuxnet operation was very sophisticated. That is, coming up with a plan, infecting the right machine in the right plant at the right time so an unknowing technician would accidentally become a carrier for it, then finding a way to make him drop by at the target next, learn enough about the target without having access to be able to write code to identify it with confidence among lots of similar machines etc, but most of that is classical intelligence work and has nothing to do with programming, tech, or Stuxnet specifically.

If someone sews on a hidden pocket to a jacket to be used in an extremely complex intelligence operation, that doesn't make it "the most sophisticated seam in history".

> Find me another program that requires knowledge more niche than nuclear refinement processes suitable for the production of weapons

Every piece of software used for these centrifuges in day to day operations? Stuxnet is just a worse version of the normal software operating machinery and it used a non-standard install mechanism.

Having HUMINT to target a specific configuration is not sophisticated either. Those are just activation conditions which are used all over legitimate and illegitimate software.

Extracting secrets from processor caches based on timing is far more sophisticated and it didn’t even require HUMINT.

> Stuxnet is just a worse version of the normal software operating machinery and it used a non-standard install mechanism.

No it's not. Stuxnet was specifically tuned to ruin the centrifuges under the noses of the presumably well-trained operators and scientists using them. If the PLC suddenly stopped or sped up to the point that it triggered some kind of failsafe then the game is up.

> Extracting secrets from processor caches based on timing is far more sophisticated and it didn’t even require HUMINT.

Implementing spectre is really not that hard. Also, the secrets aren't extracted from the caches (in the archetypal spectre implementation at least, the vulnerabilities are popping up all over the place): Spectre is an attack against the branch predictor and speculative execution - the cache is just the side channel to exfiltrate data (specifically having each byte value map to a cacheline which you can then time the latency of).

> Stuxnet isn't the most sophisticated piece of software ever written

I think "sophisticated" is in the eye of the beholder.

However you'd like to characterize it, the full scope of the Stuxnet attack seems pretty impressive. Especially the part where the virus simultaneously increases centrifuge speeds while concealing this information from the people monitoring the fuges.

Does everyone agree with that assessment? Surely Linux is more complicated than Stuxnet? Or does that not count as a ‘single piece’?

Sophisticated != complicated

Ok, but I would have presumed linux was also more sophisticated, having been developed over a much longer period of time.

What is it that’s more sophisticated about stuxnet than Linux?

A good rule of thumb to think about it might be, how many people in the world could write code to achieve a particular objective?

If the answer is 100,000's of people (i.e. good programmers), then it's not super-sophisticated, no matter how complicated it may be.

If the answer is 100's of people, then it is super-sophisticated. Stuxnet appears to be the latter, given the advanced techniques, zero-days, and target knowledge it required.

Think of it like the difference between New York City and a nuclear fusion warhead. New York City is incredibly more complicated than a warhead, but a warhead is incredibly more sophsiticated.

Looks like this is descending quicker than usual on the HN front-page [1], anyone know why?

[1] https://ibb.co/0hjnyq7

More comments than upvotes for the article itself. That usually indicates a flame war. And the comments have sometimes tended that direction...

> Iran, which insists it does not want nuclear weapons

The bias in BBC phrasing still amazes me. Using “Iran insists it does not want nuclear weapons”, which is technically a true statement, instead of the more accurate one “There is no evidence that Iran seeks nuclear weapons”, which acknowledges the investigation and authority of the international atomic agency.

Israel has been targeting Iranian civil infrastructure and is also believed to be behind numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists. Scientists are usually deemed to be civilians. Since Israel has already attacked civilian targets and killed civilians, it would seem to me that by the laws of tit for that, Iran has the right to retaliate against Israeli civilians. In fact, Iran's allies such as Syria and Hezbollah should also have the same right.

Israel's use of terrorism against what it considers its enemies is afaik unprecedented. As is the fact that the rest of the world lets Israel get away with it without so much as a peep.

Are they still considered civilians when they work for a military program that threatens Israel existence? My grandfather was a scientist working for the army, he had a salary paid by the military and was part of it.

Yes, by the rules of war they are civilians.

Let's assume that they were not and that the facility was a legitimate military target. Then it stands to reason that every Israeli person who helped stage this attack is also a legitimate military target. Every engineer who touched the malware code, every engineer who touched code for the tools to create the malware code, every project manager to any such engineer, every university professor who taught these engineers to create the malware code, every investor who profited from the military's procurement of the malware code the engineers wrote, etc.

Add to the fact that the assassination of Iranian scientists is at least partially about deterrence - attempting to scare away nuclear scientists - and you have a strong argument in favor of treating Israel's cybersecurity industry as fair game for Iranian assassinations. It becomes very hard to draw a hard and fast line between civilian and combatant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com