Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage | Hacker News Reader

Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage

nytimes.com

38 pointsjbegley36 comments

So the original story, which is currently still linked to on the HN front page, was that the blackout was a cyberattack. However, now its being reported that it is very clearly a kinetic explosion - with fingers pointing at Israel.

Where is the other story?

They all seam to be removed from the frontpage.

Aw well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26771224

See also, the Stuxnet US/Israel cyber attack against Iran's Natanz nuclear facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Iran should embrace the reality that regardless of whatever diplomatic agreements they reach with the rest of the world Israel is simply never going to let them have nuclear weapons.

I don't think Iran really wants nuclear weapons. It's just the only leverage they have.

Source: Iranian Jew.

Leverage into sanctions and political sidelining?

Great strategy.

Well, Iran gave up on all nuclear facilities after JCPOA. Yet, the Trump administrations doubled down on sanctions. The country is now miserable.

At that point the only leverage they have is to bring back nuclear activities because without it you're left with absolutely no leverage.

Fool me twice..

> “nuclear terrorism”

Why is it between quotes?

Because it is a quote

Yeah sure.

It literally is a quote in the article though. Probably if NYT wanted to be biased they could've just have not put the word "terrorism" in the title at all?

It's not terrorism but sabotage, indeed.

"Nuclear terrorism" also implies you're committing acts of terror with nuclear weapons - which is not the case.

Well, attacking a nuclear plant is considered everywhere as "nuclear terrorism".

Never mind the nuclear part, it's not terrorism either. Terrorism implies a civilian target. A military facility for producing nuclear weapons is definitely not a civilian target.

You should just accept your ambivalence and hypocrisy.

It’s really hard to be on the bad side against such an awful theocracy, but you made it, congrats.

I'm confused, how am I on the bad side against Iran?

Iran falsely claimed something as Nuclear Terrorism, when it's neither of those things - that would put me on the good side against them, not the bad.

I think most people would assume nuclear terrorism involved nuclear or radioactive weapons, not an attack on a nuclear power plant.

Is it? I would have assumed that use of nuclear weapon would be needed for nuclear terrorism. The idea of 'nuclear terrorism' puts a very different picture in my head than this. If someone dropped a nuclear bomb 'Equation Group' of the NSA would you call that a 'cyber terrorism'.

It's apparently a quote, but besides that it would also not conform to most people's definition of nuclear terrorism (which would presumably involve nuclear weapons or dispersing radioactive material etc.).

Why is the NY Times accusing Israel, or any external party, without any evidence? Israel didn't take responsibility, and they're basing their whole story on an unnamed source.

The evidence is the officials the Times spoke with, who are anonymous to us but not to the Times. You don’t have to agree that this is sufficient, but it’s considerably more evidence than spewing random facts.

> ... Israel publicly declined to confirm or deny any responsibility. But American and Israeli intelligence officials said there had been an Israeli role.

And who are these alleged officials? That was my point.

Assuming that the sources are trustworthy, and I trust the NYT in their due diligence on this, what incentive is there for the sources to lie about an admission of responsibility? Personally I don’t see one. If it was the opposite I might be more skeptical.

In general these sources are known employees of these agencies whom the journalist knows and can vouch for. However the idea is they would never give up their name. These same people may sometimes be quoted directly but we don't know. So the journalist believes the source that's why it is printed. If it turned out to be demonstrably incorrect then next time you don't trust the journalist and the journalist doesn't trust the source.

Remember this is a 2 way street. The intelligence agencies want everyone to know it was them, but they can't go claiming credit in public,so you get an unnamed source.

They could have done an anon twitch stream atleast. Its 2021...who needs newspapers and journos. They are outdated information surfacing systems.

Yes because a random twitch stream is going to be believed. The newspaper and the journalist have credibility. If you dont understand how the media and politics/government work then I can't educate you on that in this comment section.

Edward Snowden was originally an unnamed source. It's pretty common.

Unnamed sources are par for the course for journalism. Sometimes journalists receive information only on condition that the source remain anonymous, and they have to work with that.

Israel does seem to be taking responsibility. Israeli “public radio took the unusual step of claiming that the Mossad intelligence agency had played a central role.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/israel-appears...

Israel has obvious motive for making attacks on Iranian infrastructure. Portugal has no such motive for attacking Texas. Having motive of course isn't the same thing as being guilty but does make for an obvious place to start looking. It's also possible that the Times has some information that they cannot source at this time. Or they're just making things up, in which case, keep this story in mind next time you read some story in the Times that has no credible source attributed but fits a narrative you're interested in hearing. Pretty much anything coming out of the media these days needs extra examination for their own set of motives.

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