WarSclerotic

Bits before bombs: How Stuxnet crippled Iran’s nuclear dreams.

When the Stuxnet computer worm first surfaced back in June, it seemed like a sophisticated piece of malware that was ineffective, but dangerous. A few months later, it appears that the worm may have crippled Iran’s nuclear plans, leading to some analysts to describe it’s coming “like the arrival of an F35 into WWI battlefield.”

The future of warfare may have just begun, but rather than being heralded by an explosion, it began without a sound or a single casualty.

It is the first of its kind, and could be a signal of the ways all wars are fought from now on. It is a cyber weapon so precise that it can destroy a target more effectively than a conventional explosive, and then simply delete itself, leaving the victims left to blame themselves. It is a weapon that is so terrible that it could conceivably do more than just damage physical objects, it could kill ideas. It is the Stuxnet worm, dubbed by many as the world first real weapon of cyberwarfare, and its first target was Iran.

The dawn of cyberwarfare

Stuxnet is almost like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. Rather than sending in missiles to destroy a nuclear plant that threatens the entire region and the world, and is overseen by a president who has claimed that he would like to see an entire race of people “wiped off the map,” a simple computer virus can be introduced that will do the job far more effectively. To attack a structure with missiles can lead to war, and besides, buildings can be rebuilt. But to infect a system so completely that the people using it begin to doubt their faith in their own abilities will have far more devastating long-term effects.

In a rare moment of openness from Iran, the nation has confirmed that the Stuxnet malware (the name stems from keywords buried in the code) that was originally discovered in July, has damaged the country’s nuclear ambitions. Although Iran is downplaying the incident, some reports suggest that the worm was so effective, it may have set back the Iranian nuclear program by several years.

Rather than simply infect a system and destroy everything it touches, Stuxnet is far more sophisticated than that, and far more effective as well.

The worm is smart and adaptable. When it enters a new system, it remains dormant and learns the security system of the computer. Once it can operate without raising alarm, it then seeks out very specific targets and begins to attack certain systems. Rather than simply destroy its targets, it does something far more effective—it misleads them.

In a nuclear enrichment program, a centrifuge is a fundamental tool needed to refine the uranium. Each centrifuge built follows the same basic mechanics, but the German manufacturer Siemens offers what many consider to be the best in the industry. Stuxnet sought out the Siemens controllers and took command of the way the centrifuge spins. But rather than simply forcing the machines to spin until they destroyed themselves—which the worm was more than capable of doing—Stuxnet made subtle, and far more devious changes to the machines.

When a uranium sample was inserted into a Stuxnet-infected centrifuge for refinement, the virus would command the machine to spin faster than it was designed for, then suddenly stop. The results were thousands of machines that wore out years ahead of schedule, and more importantly, ruined samples. But the real trick of the virus was that while it was sabotaging the machinery, it would falsify the readings and make it appear as if everything was operating within the expected parameters.

After months of this, the centrifuges began to wear down and break, but as the readings still appeared to be within the norms, the scientists associated with the project began to second guess themselves. Iranian security agents began to investigate the failures, and the staff at the nuclear facilities lived under a cloud of fear and suspicion. This went on for over a year. If the virus had managed to completely avoid detection, it eventually would have deleted itself entirely and left the Iranians wondering what they were doing wrong.

For 17 months, the virus managed to quietly work its way into the Iranian systems, slowly destroying vital samples and damaging necessary equipment. Perhaps more than the damage to the machinery and the samples was the chaos the program was thrown into.

The Iranians grudgingly admit some of the damage

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed that Stuxnet “managed to create problems for a limited number of our centrifuges,” which is a change from Iran’s earlier assertion that the worm had infected 30,000 computers, but had not affected the nuclear facilities. Some reports suggest at the Natanz facility, which houses the Iranian enrichment programs, 5,084 out of 8,856 centrifuges in use at the Iranian nuclear facilities were taken offline, possibly due to damage, and the plant has been forced to shut down at least twice due to the effects of the virus.

Stuxnet also targeted the Russian-made steam turbine that powers the Bushehr facility, but it appears that the virus was discovered before any real damage could be done. If the virus had not been uncovered, it would eventually have run the RPMs of the turbines too high and caused irreparable damage to the entire power plant. Temperature and cooling systems have also been identified as targets, but the results of the worm on these systems isn’t clear.

The discovery of the worm

In June of this year, the Belarus-based antivirus specialists, VirusBlokAda found a previously unknown malware program on the computer of an Iranian customer. After researching it, the antivirus company discovered that it was specifically designed to target Siemens SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) management systems, which are devices used in large-scale manufacturing. The first clue that something was different about this worm was that once the alert had been raised, every company that tried to pass on the alert was subsequently attacked and forced to shut down for at least 24 hours. The methods and reasons for the attacks are still a mystery.

Once the virus had been discovered, companies like Symantec and Kaspersky, two of the largest antivirus companies in the world, as well as several intelligence agencies, began to research Stuxnet, and found results that quickly made it obvious that this was no ordinary malware.

By the end of September, Symantec had discovered that nearly 60-percent of all the machines infected in the world were located in Iran. Once that had been discovered, it became more and more apparent that the virus was not designed simply to cause problems, as many pieces of malware are, but it had a very specific purpose and a target. The level of sophistication was also well above anything seen before, prompting Ralph Langner, the computer security expert who first discovered the virus, to declare that it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield”.

How it worked

Stuxnet specifically targets Windows 7 operating systems, which is, not coincidentally, the same operating system used at the Iranian nuclear power plant. The worm uses four zero-day attacks and specifically targets Siemens’ WinCC/PCS 7 SCADA software. A zero-day threat is a vulnerability that is either unknown or unannounced by the manufacturer. These are generally system-critical vulnerabilities, and once they are discovered, immediately patched. In this case, the two of the zero-day elements had been discovered and were close to having a fixes released, but two others had never been discovered by anyone. Once the worm was in the system, it then began to exploit other systems in the local network it was targeting.

As Stuxnet worked its way through the Iranian systems, it was challenged by the system’s security to present a legitimate certificate. The malware then presented two authentic certificates, one from the circuit manufacturer JMicron, and the other from computer hardware manufacturer Realtek. Both companies are located in Taiwan just blocks away from each other, and both certificates were confirmed to have been stolen. These authentic certificates are one of the reasons that the worm was able to remain undetected for so long.

The malware also had the ability to communicate via peer-to-peer sharing when an Internet connection was present, which allowed it to upgrade as necessary and report back its progress. The servers that Stuxnet communicated with were located in Denmark and Malaysia, and both were shut down once the worm was confirmed to have entered the Natanz facility.

As Stuxnet began to spread throughout the Iranian systems, it began to target only the “frequency converters” responsible for centrifuges. Using variable-frequency drives as markers, the worm looked specifically for drives from two vendors: Vacon, which is based in Finland, and Fararo Paya, which is based in Iran. It then monitors the specified frequencies, and only attacks if a system is running between 807Hz and 1210Hz, a fairly rare frequency that explains how the worm could so specifically target Iranian nuclear plants despite spreading around the world. Stuxnet then sets about altering the output frequency, which affects the connected motors. Although at least 15 other Siemens’ systems have reported infection, none have sustained any damage from the worm.

To first reach the nuclear facility, the worm needed to be brought into the system, possibly on a USB drive. Iran uses an “air gap” security system, meaning the facility has no connection to the Internet. This might explain why the worm spread so far, as the only way for it to infect the system is was to target a wide area and act as a Trojan while waiting for an Iranian nuclear employee to receive an infected file away from the facility and physically bring it into the plant. Because of this, it will be almost impossible to know exactly where and when the infection began, as it may have been brought in by several unsuspecting employees.

But where did it come from, and who developed it?

Suspicions of where the worm originated are rampant, and the most likely single suspect is Israel. After thoroughly researching the virus, Kaspersky Labs announced that the level of attack, and the sophistication with which it was executed could only have been carried out “with nation-state support”, which rules out private hacker groups, or even larger groups that have been using hacking as a means to an end, such as the Russian Mafia, which is suspected of creating a Trojan worm responsible for stealing over $1 million from a British bank.

Israel fully admits that it considers cyberwarfare to be a pillar of its defense doctrine, and the group known as Unit 8200, an Israeli defense force considered to be the rough equivalent of the United States’ NSA, would be the most likely group responsible.

Unit 8200 is the largest division in the Israeli Defense Force, and yet the majority of its operations are unknown- even the identity of the Brigadier General in charge of the unit is classified. Among its many exploits, one report claims that during an Israeli airstrike on a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Unit 8200 activated a secret cyber kill switch that deactivated large sections of the Syrian radar.

To further lend credence to this theory, in 2009, Israel pushed back the date of when it expects Iran to have rudimentary nuclear weaponry to 2014. This may have been a result of hearing of problems, or it could suggest that Israel knew something no one else did.

The U.S. is also a prime suspect, and in May of this year, Iran claimed to have arrested 30 people it claims were involved in helping the U.S. wage a “cyber war” against Iran. Iran has also claimed that the Bush administration funded a $400 million plan to destabilize Iran by using cyber attacks. Iran has claimed that the Obama administration has continued that same plan, and even sped up some of the projects. Critics have stated that Iran’s claims are simply an excuse to stamp out “undesirables”, and the arrests are one of many points of contentions between Iran and the U.S.

But as the virus continues to be studied and more answers emerged regarding its function, more mysteries are being raised about its origins.

According to Microsoft, the virus would have taken at least 10,000 hours of coding, and taken a team of five people or more, at least six months of dedicated work. Many are now speculating that it would require the combined efforts of several nations’ intelligence communities all working together to create the worm. While the Israelis might have the determination and the technicians, some are claiming that it would require the United States’ level of technology to code the malware. To know the exact nature of the Siemens machinery to the extent that Stuxnet did might suggest German involvement, and the Russians may have been involved in detailing the specs of the Russian machinery used. The worm was tailored to operate on frequencies that involved Finnish components, which suggests that Finland, and perhaps NATO is involved as well. But there are still more mysteries.

The worm was not detected because of its actions at the Iranian nuclear facilities, but rather as a result of the widespread infection of Stuxnet. The central processing core of the Iranian nuclear processing plant is located deep underground, and is totally cut off from the Internet. For the worm to infect the system, it must have been brought in on the computer or a flash drive of a member of the staff. All it would take is a single employee to take work him with them on something as innocuous as a flash drive, then return and insert that drive into the computer, and Stuxnet would begin its silent march to the specific machinery it wanted.

But the question then becomes: Why did the people responsible for the virus develop such an incredibly sophisticated cyberweapon, and then release it in what is arguably such a sloppy method? If the goal was to remain undetected, the release of a virus that has the ability to replicate at the speed that it has shown is sloppy. It was a matter of when, not if, the virus would be discovered.

The most likely reason is that the developers simply didn’t care. To plant the malware more carefully would have taken far more time, and the transmission of the worm into the specific systems might take much longer. If a country is looking for immediate results to halt what it might see as an impending attack, then speed might trump caution. The Iranian nuclear plant is the only infected system to report any real damage from Stuxnet, so the risk to other systems seems to be minimal.

So what next?

Siemens has released a detection and removal tool for Stuxnet, but Iran is still struggling to remove the malware completely. As recently as November 23, the Iranian facility of Natanz was forced to shut down, and further delays are expected. Eventually, the nuclear program should be back up and running.

In a separate, but possibly related story, earlier this week two Iranian scientists were killed by separate but identical bomb attacks in Tehran, Iran. At a press conference the following day, President Ahmadinejad told reporters that “Undoubtedly, the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved in the assassination.”

Earlier today, Iranian officials claimed to have made several arrests in the bombings, and although the suspects identities have not been released, Iran’s Intelligence Minister has said “The three spy agencies of Mossad, CIA and MI6 had a role in the (attacks) and, with the arrest of these people, we will find new clues to arrest other elements,”

The combination of the bombings and the damage caused by the Stuxnet virus should weigh heavily over the upcoming talks between Iran and a six-nation confederation of China, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, and the U.S. on December 6 and 7. The talks are meant to continue the dialogue regarding Iran’s possible nuclear ambitions.

Commentary: Wikileaks and the Arabs | The National Interest.

One of the highlights of the most recent Wikileaks release has been the focus on Arab attitudes toward Iran. The headlines suggest Arab unanimity in support of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on the Islamic Republic, as long as Arab governments are allowed to keep their heads low to the ground. There was much evidence, and many colorful quotations, to make the case, especially from Saudi, Bahraini, and United Arab Emirates’ leaders. And although some of the quotations were jaw-dropping, in truth it was all a bunch of stuff we’ve heard before. But analysis by the media that followed, and the sweeping conclusion that “Arabs support attacking Iran,” is misplaced and ignores significant differences among Arab governments about how to deal with Iran—and especially missed the boat on true attitudes of the Arab public.

As I pointed out [3] in an analysis on this site in September most Arab governments are

suspicious of Iran and worry about rising Iranian power and influence, the degree of concern varies, and the sources of concern vary even more. . . . Most Arab governments would like Iranian power trimmed, with some supporting a potential attack on its nuclear facilities by either Israel or the United States. But Arab governments’ calculations cover a broad spectrum.

In fact, while Wikileaks showed the extent to which Arab leaders almost universally worry about rising Iranian influence, their attitudes toward military action were far from unanimous­—even in the Gulf region. Leaders in Oman counseled against a war with the Islamic Republic, and the same goes for any number of Saudi officials. While Qatar expressed suspicion of Tehran’s intentions, Israel’s Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, reportedly worried about Qatar’s cozying up with Iran; so much so that he recommended that the United States close the American base there, which he saw as Qatar’s security insurance policy. And, at least in the foreseeable future, Syria is an ally of Iran. In many Arab countries, there was significant concern about the repercussions of an attack on Iran. This was the case for Kuwait and Jordan. And while there was much focus on a cable from Jordan describing Jordanian wariness about U.S. engagement with Iran and comparing Tehran to an “Octopus,” what was missed is that the same cable also noted that “they believe they can be severed if Iran is deprived of hot-button issues that make it a hero to many on the Arab street, such as its championing of the Palestinian cause.” Indeed, Most of Jordan’s—and of Egypt’s—expressed concerns focused on Iranian influence and meddling in Arab affairs, particularly in their neighborhoods, rather than being distinctly related to a U.S. or Israeli attack.

But the biggest gap in the recent coverage of the story has been understanding Arab public opinion toward Iran and how this affects government calculations. In fact, Iran has the ability to play the Arab-public-opinion card and reach out to groups that threaten the control of Arab governments. And there is evidence that they have succeeded in doing just that, even beyond the rising power of their allies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon. In large part, Tehran benefits from Arab public anger toward Israel and the United States, and from the perceived paralysis of their own leaders: consistently, in the past several years, all the polls I’ve conducted at the University of Maryland with cooperation from Zogby International show that in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon, the Arab public expressed views about Iran that highlighted just how different the public feels when compared to the elites. Last August, I released the 2010 Arab public opinion poll results [4], which indicated that Arabs polled were more open to Iran’s nuclear program, including the possibility of nuclear-weapons production, than ever before. In an open question about the world leader Arabs admired most, Ahmadinejad was chosen by 12 percent of those questioned—landing him in third place, behind only Turkish leader Recep Erdoğan and Venezuelan demagogue Hugo Chavez. My own analysis of the results suggested that Iran is benefiting from the sentiment that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This was particularly visible when those polled were asked to identify the two states that posed the biggest threat to them: 88 percent identified Israel, 77 percent identified the United States and 10 percent identified Iran. While the results on this latter issue varied somewhat from country to country, the trend held across countries polled.

These results seemed surprising to some, particularly given the known animosity of Arab governments toward Iran, even before the release of the Wikileaks documents. But when it comes to public opinion at least, the results should hardly raise an eyebrow, as they are supported by broader evidence in the Arab discourse. Polls aside, one gets a good flavor of the type of Arab public reactions from reader comments on popular web sites. These do not provide scientific evidence in the same way as do polls, but they provide texture.

In the wake of Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon last October, for example, I conducted an analysis of online reader comments on two popular web sites: Aljazeera.net and Alarabiyya.net. The Saudi-funded Alarabiyya and the Qatari-funded Aljazeera have different editorial policies, including on Iran. But the results are telling: The visit generated considerable reaction not only in Lebanon but also elsewhere in the Arab world and beyond. And it seemed to play into all the issues: the Sunni-Shia divide, Iran’s rising influence in the Arab world and its animosity to Israel. Having translated the first twenty-five comments on each site, here is a snapshot of reader feedback (for the complete list of reader reactions click here):

Aljazeera.net:

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iran has always stood against Israel and with Arab rights. Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon is a message that says “we are here.”

God bless the Iranian nation and I hope God makes it the most powerful on earth and may America fall.

God be with you Ahmadinejad who is with those in Palestine and fights the Americans and the Zionists.

I don’t like the Shi’a and I am against the visit at this point BUT we should thank Iran for its support of the resistance. So I don’t know which camp I belong to???

Alarabiyya.net:

If only the Lebanese people would take care of their own problems, they wouldn’t bicker about this inconsequential visit (Saudi Arabia)

Ahmadinejad is a hero like no other! He is the shepherd of the resistance and we thank God for you.

How can those who are against the visit call for the liberation of Palestine?!!! How can you object to his visit when he is championing the Palestinian cause?

In all, the results were telling: of the fifty comments on both sites, 60 percent were positive about Ahmadinejad’s visit, 30 percent were negative and 10 percent were neutral. Alarabiyya’s readers were almost evenly divided between those who were positive and those who were negative, while 70 percent of Aljazeera’s readers were positive about the visit.

In the past week, my team and I also reviewed the first forty reader reactions on each of the same two sites to the stories about what Arab leaders had said in the leaked Wikileaks documents. A quick analysis showed varied reaction, but hostility toward Iran was hardly the most prominent, and very few expressed support for military action against Iran. In fact, the most apparent reader reactions were to see the leaks themselves as a U.S.-Western conspiracy and confirmation of what they already thought they knew about their own governments’ attitudes.

All this should provide a note of caution about the blanket interpretation that a few select quotations from Wiklileaks documents provide evidence that “the Arabs” are anxious to see a military attack on Iran. Some governments are, others aren’t, but their publics are far less worried about the Islamic Republic than they are about Israel and the United States.

Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist had many authors | Spero News.

On the morning of Nov. 29, two Iranian scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear development program were attacked. One was killed, and the other was injured. According to Iranian media, the deceased, Dr. Majid Shahriari, was heading the team responsible for developing the technology to design a nuclear reactor core, and Time magazine referred to him as the highest-ranking non-appointed individual working on the project.

Official reports indicate that Shahriari was killed when assailants on motorcycles attached a “sticky bomb” to his vehicle and detonated it seconds later. However, the Time magazine report says that an explosive device concealed inside the car detonated and killed him. Shahriari’s driver and wife, both of whom were in the car at the time, were injured.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town, Dr. Fereidoon Abassi was injured in a sticky-bomb attack reportedly identical to the one officials said killed Shahriari. His wife was accompanying him and was also injured (some reports indicate that a driver was also in the car at the time of the attack). Abassi and his wife are said to be in stable condition. Abassi is perhaps even more closely linked to Iran’s nuclear program than Shahriari was, since he was a member of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and was named in a 2007 U.N. resolution that sanctioned high-ranking members of Iran’s defense and military agencies believed to be trying to obtain nuclear weapons.

The November 29 incidents occurred at a time of uncertainty over how global powers and Iran’s neighbors will handle an Iran apparently pursuing nuclear weapons despite its claims of developing only a civilian nuclear program and asserting itself as a regional power in the Middle East. Through economic sanctions that went into effect last year, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany (known as the “P-5+1”) have been pressuring Iran to enter negotiations over its nuclear program and outsource the most sensitive aspects the program, such as higher levels of uranium enrichment.

The Nov. 29 attacks came about a week before Saeed Jalili, Iran’s national security chief, will be leading a delegation to meet with the P-5+1 from Dec. 6-7 in Vienna, the first such meeting in more than a year. The attacks also came within hours of the WikiLeaks release of classified U.S. State Department cables, which are filled with international concerns about Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

Because of the international scrutiny and sanctions on just about any hardware required to develop a nuclear program, Iran has focused on developing domestic technologies that can fill the gaps. This has required a national initiative coordinated by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to build the country’s nuclear program from scratch, an endeavor that requires thousands of experts from various fields of the physical sciences as well as the requisite technologies.

And it was the leader of the AEOI, Ali Akhbar Salehi, who told media Nov. 29 that Shahriari was “in charge of one of the great projects” at the agency. Salehi also issued a warning to Iran’s enemies “not to play with fire.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elaborated on the warning, accusing “Zionist” and “Western regimes” of being behind the coordinated attacks against Shahriari and Abassi. The desire of the U.N. Security Council (along with Israel and Germany) to stop Iran’s nuclear program and the apparent involvement of the targeted scientists in that program has led many Iranian officials to quickly blame the United States, United Kingdom and Israel for the attacks, since those countries have been the loudest in condemning Iran for its nuclear ambitions.

It seems that certain domestic rivals of the Iranian regime would also benefit from these attacks. Any one of numerous Iranian militant groups throughout the country may have been involved in one way or another, perhaps with the assistance of a foreign power. A look at the tactics used in the attacks could shed some light on the perpetrators.

Modus Operandi

According to official Iranian reports, Abassi was driving to work at Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran from his residence in southern Tehran. When the car in which he and his wife were traveling was on Artash Street, assailants on at least two motorcycles approached the vehicle and attached an improvised explosive device (IED) to the driver’s-side door. The device exploded shortly thereafter, injuring Abassi and his wife.

Images reportedly of Abassi’s vehicle show that the driver’s side door was destroyed, but the rest of the vehicle and the surrounding surfaces show very little damage. A few pockmarks can be seen on the vehicle behind Abassi’s car but little else to indicate that a bomb had gone off in the vicinity. (Earlier reports indicating that this was Shahriari’s vehicle proved erroneous.) This indicates that the IED was a shaped charge with a very specific target. Evidence of both the shaped charge and the utilization of projectiles in the device suggests that the device was put together by a competent and experienced bomb-maker.

An eyewitness account of the attack offers one explanation why the device did not kill Abassi. According to the man who was driving immediately behind Abassi’s car, the car abruptly stopped in traffic, then Abassi got out and went to the passenger side where his wife was sitting. The eyewitness said Abassi and his wife were about 2 meters from the car, on the opposite side when the IED exploded. Abassi appears to have been aware of the attack as it was under way, which apparently saved his life. The eyewitness did not mention whether he saw the motorcyclists attach the device to the car before it went off, but that could have been what tipped Abassi off. If this was the case, the bomb-maker may have done his job well in building the device but the assailants gave themselves away when they planted it.

In the fatal attack against Shahriari, he also was on his way to work at Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran in his vehicle with his wife, according to official reports. These reports indicate that he definitely had a driver, which would suggest that Shahriari was considered a person of importance. Their car was traveling through a parking lot in northern Tehran when assailants on at least two motorcycles approached the vehicle and attached an IED to the car. Eyewitnesses say that the IED exploded seconds later and that the motorcyclists escaped. Shahriari was presumably killed in the explosion while his wife and driver were injured.

The official account of the attack is contradicted by the Time magazine report, which cites a “Western intelligence source with knowledge of the operation” as saying that the IED that killed Shahriari detonated from inside the vehicle. Images of what appears to be Shahriari’s vehicle are much poorer quality than the images of Abassi’s vehicle, but they do appear to show damage to the windshield and other car windows. The car is still very much intact, though, and the fact that Shahriari’s driver and wife escaped with only injuries suggests that the device used against Shahriari was also a shaped charge, specifically targeting him.

Capabilities

Attacks like the two carried out against Abassi and Shahriari require a high level of tradecraft that is available only to well-trained operatives. There is much more going on below the surface in attacks like these that is not immediately obvious when reading media reports. First, the team of assailants that attacked Abassi and Shahriari had to identify their targets and confirm that the men they were attacking were indeed high-level scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program. The fact that Abassi and Shahriari held such high positions indicates they were specifically selected as targets and not the victims of a lucky, opportunistic attack.

Second, the team had to conduct surveillance of the two scientists. The team had to positively identify their vehicles and determine their schedules and routes in order to know when and how to launch their attacks. Both attacks targeted the scientists as they traveled to work, likely a time when they were most vulnerable, an MO commonly used by assassins worldwide.

Third, someone with sufficient expertise had to build IEDs that would kill their targets. Both devices appear to have been relatively small IEDs that were aimed precisely at the scientists, which may have been an attempt to limit collateral damage (their small size may also have been due to efforts to conceal the device). Both devices seem to have been adequate to kill their intended targets, and judging by the damage to his vehicle, it appears that Abassi would have received mortal wounds had he stayed in the driver’s seat.

The deployment stage seems to be where things went wrong for the assailants, at least in the Abassi attack. It is unclear exactly what alerted him, but it appears that he was exercising some level of situational awareness and was able to determine that an attack was under way.

It is not at all surprising that someone like Abassi would have been practicing situational awareness. This is not the first time that scientists linked to Iran’s nuclear program have been attacked, and Iranian agencies linked to the nuclear program have probably issued general security guidance to their employees (especially high-ranking ones like Abassi and Shahriari). In 2007, Ardeshir Hassanpour was killed in an alleged poisoning that STRATFOR sources attributed to an Israeli operation.

Again, in January 2010, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, another Iranian scientist who taught at Tehran University, was killed in an IED attack that also targeted him as he was driving to work in the morning. While some suspected that Ali-Mohammadi may have been targeted by the Iranian regime due to his connections with the opposition, Abassi and Shahriari appear much too close to the regime to be targets of their own government (however, nothing can be ruled out in politically volatile Tehran). The similarities between the Ali-Mohammadi assassination and the attacks against Abassi and Shahriari suggest that a covert campaign to attack Iranian scientists could well be under way.

There is little doubt that the Nov. 29 attacks struck a greater blow to the development of Iran’s nuclear program than the previous two attacks. Shahriari appears to have had an integral role in the program. While he will likely be replaced and work will go on, his death could slow the program’s progress (at least temporarily) and further stoke security fears in Iran’s nuclear development community. The attacks come amid WikiLeaks revelations that Saudi King Abdullah and U.S. officials discussed assassinating Iranian leaders, accusations that the United States or Israel was behind the Stuxnet computer worm that allegedly targeted the computer systems running Iran’s nuclear program and the return home of Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scientist who alleged that the United States held him against his will earlier in the summer.

The evidence suggests that foreign powers are actively trying to probe and sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. However, doing so is not that simple. Tehran is not nearly as open a city as Dubai, where Israeli operatives are suspected of assassinating a high-level Hamas leader in January 2010. It is unlikely that the United States, Israel or any other foreign power could deploy its own team of assassins into Tehran to carry out a lengthy targeting, surveillance and attack operation without some on-the-ground help.

And there is certainly plenty of help on the ground in Iran. Kurdish militants like the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan have conducted numerous assassinations against Iranian clerics and officials in Iran’s western province of Kordestan. Sunni separatist militants in the southeast province of Sistan-Balochistan, represented by the group Jundallah, have also targeted Iranian interests in eastern Iran in recent years. Other regional militant opposition groups like Mujahideen-e Khalq, which has offered intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program to the United States, and Azeri separatists pose marginal threats to the Iranian regime. However, none of these groups has demonstrated the ability to strike such high-level officials in the heart of Tehran with such a degree of professionalism. While that is unlikely, they have the capability and a history of eliminating dissidents through assassinations. Furthermore, the spuriousness of many contradictory media reports makes the attacks suspicious.

It is unlikely that any foreign power was able to conduct this operation by itself and equally unlikely that any indigenous militant group was able to pull off an attack like this without some assistance. The combination of the two, however, could provide an explanation of how the attacks targeting Shariari and Abassi got so close to complete success.

Ben West writes for STRATFOR, from where this article is adapted.

WikiLeaks, Iran: Cables highlight Arab contempt for Iran – CTnow.

Confidential memos further agitate the ill-will between Arab capitals and Tehran over its nuclear enrichment program and influence on militant groups.

The Middle East has been suspicious of Iran for years, but the recent disclosure of diplomatic cables highlights the contempt that has spurred Arab countries to strengthen their defenses, including Saudi Arabia’s $60-billion deal with the United States to buy missiles and F-15 fighter jets.

Confidential memos from U.S. embassies made public over the weekend by WikiLeaks are not likely to reshape the region’s political maneuverings. But they have further agitated the ill will between Tehran and Arab capitals over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and its influence on militant groups in Iraq, the Gaza Strip and other locales.

The release of the cables has narrowed diplomatic wiggle room. Saudi King Abdullah, quoted as urging the U.S. to attack Iran, is likely to find it tough convincing Tehran that he supports regional harmony. The leaks also reveal that Arab countries have a deeper reliance on Washington than they care to acknowledge to their largely anti-American populations.

“There is no surprise in this relationship but it will give opposition groups the ability to say, ‘Look at the puppets your leaders are,'” said Randa Habib, a Jordan-based political analyst. “But because it concerns Iran it is somewhat understandable. The fear of gulf leaders is genuine over how this large country [Iran] can eat them.”

Although obsessed by Iran’s bluster and intrigue, Arab countries have limited options. Talk of countering Tehran has led to calls for increased diplomacy and the possibility of Arab capitals starting or expanding nuclear programs that could manufacture weapons. Such a prospect would make more precarious a part of the world mired in war, terrorism and sectarian hostilities.

“There are those who argue that Iran’s development of nuclear warheads would pose a threat to Saudi Arabia and other gulf states, thus launching a nuclear arms race,” read an editorial in the pan-Arab Al Quds al Arabi newspaper. “However, why does the response not take the form of a full-fledged Arab nuclear program, especially since the Arabs have the money, capabilities and required alliances” for a nuclear deterrent?

The more pressing concern for Arab Sunni Muslim states is keeping Shiite Muslim Iran off-balance in strategic countries. Gulf leaders want to contain Iran’s influence in Iraq and diminish its grip on Islamic militant parties, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s security concerns have intensified the debate on the Iranian threat in recent years, but Arab nations have been attempting to outflank Tehran for generations.

“The official stance in the Middle East, led by Saudi Arabia and including countries like Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, has always been that it is Iran and not Israel that poses the main threat to the region,” said Mustafa El-Labbad, director of Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

“What WikiLeaks did was unveil everything to regular citizens around the world and this has led to the embarrassment of regimes in the Middle East. But there is nothing new in the cables,” he said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the diplomatic disclosures “psychological warfare” by the U.S. He was quoted as saying, “Regional countries are all friends with each other. Such mischief will have no impact on the relations of countries.”

The leaked musings of diplomats, kings and presidents come at a sensitive time in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are anxious about who will succeed Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak, both in their 80s. Opposition anger, poverty and failing education systems have added domestic pressures to international tension across the region.

Ahmadinejad and Iran’s ruling theocracy have their own constraints. Tehran is beset with international economic sanctions aimed at its nuclear program, which Iran says is for civilian purposes only, but the West suspects is aimed at producing weapons. A large U.S. military presence looms nearby, including U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and the Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Saudi Arabia’s $60-billion arms deal with the U.S. — negotiated during Iran’s standoff with the West over its nuclear program — consists mainly of conventional weapons. But, more important, the sale is viewed by some analysts as a financial favor to keep Saudi Arabia’s oil fields protected by its most powerful friend.

“It’s a bribe,” Habib said. “Saudi Arabia buys U.S. equipment to stay on the good side of Washington. It’s more of an economic deal to benefit the U.S. The great majority of Arabs fear Iran. They believe it is too rich and too powerful and will never be an ally.”

Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said of the diplomatic documents: “I don’t think they will change policy, but they will probably make everyone in the region very cautious in what he conveys and doesn’t convey” to American officials.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Amro Hassan in The Times’ Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.

WPR Article | World Citizen: Wikileaks Cables Highlight Arab-Iranian Divide.

In a part of the world where ever-present conspiracy theories waft through the air, blending easily with the aroma from water pipes and the sounds of the Muslim call to prayer, the massive document release from Wikileaks was received with familiarity. It’s not easy to shock the people of the Middle East, certainly not with revelations about the conversations and machinations of the rich and the powerful. After all, the region has stood at the crossroads of political intrigue for thousands of years, and people have become almost immune to shock. Still, the absence of real surprises does not equal an absence of impact.

As much as leaders everywhere seem inclined to downplay its impact, the document release has the potential to gradually reshape the Middle East.

The masses may not be exactly startled by what we have learned until now through the Wikileaks revelations: not by trivial accounts, such as Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s penchant for traveling with his blonde Ukrainian nurse; nor by the more ominous, headline-grabbing accounts detailing Arab calls for the U.S. to take military action against Iran.

In fact, it has been an open secret that Arab leaders fear Iran and have urged Washington to attack. And it’s common knowledge that Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have been arming themselves with unrestrained urgency — and with Iran in mind. And yet, there is a reason why for years the truth and the animosity remained thinly hidden behind diplomatic niceties: Open hostility is dangerous. It will now be difficult, probably impossible, to put that particular Wikileaks genie back in its lamp.

Of all the headlines coming out of the classified data dump, the most striking ones have Arab leaders, one after the other, urging Washington to attack Iran. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia prodded the U.S. to “cut off the head of the snake.” Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, the head of the UAE’s armed forces, described Iran as his country’s “primary external threat” and an “existential” threat — a term we have often heard used by Israel to describe the Islamic Republic, but never by an Arab country. The commander of Oman’s armed forces warned of Iran’s “deceptive tactics” and “expansionist ideological desires in the region,” a charge echoed by Kuwait’s interior minister, who called Iran the “beating heart” of Islamic extremism. King Hamad of Bahrain, while speaking of Iran’s nuclear program with Gen. David Petraeus, exclaimed, “That program must be stopped,” arguing, in an analysis repeated by other Arab leaders, that, “The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

Ironically, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at times sounds less belligerent than the Arab leaders who publically accuse Israel of warmongering. According to diplomatic cables, Netanyahu advocates for strong economic sanctions, saying, “President Ahmadinejad could be toppled by economic pressure,” adding that, eventually, through that route, “it might be possible to bring down the entire Iranian regime.”

For many in Israel, the documents are seen as vindication. After all, the country has long argued that Iran is a threat not only to the Jewish state but to the region and the world. That argument is strengthened by the disclosure that many others in the region, in fact, see Iran that way. (One cable reported that Iran had even acquired missiles from North Korea capable of reaching Moscow and other European capitals, although some experts have expressed doubts about the claim.)

And yet, Netanyahu himself has found much to feel embarrassed about in the documents. Revelations that he disparaged former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before a U.S. congressional delegation will prove awkward, and likely prompt Olmert to be more openly critical of Netanyahu. Already, a member of the opposition Kadima Party has declared that the leaks show Netanyahu’s “empty leadership,” and accused the prime minister of putting “his political interests above those of the nation.”

The documents could help Israel make its case against Iran. But their ultimate impact on Israel will depend on whether this incident seriously weakens American diplomacy — which could prove devastating for Israel — and whether it undermines the Arab regimes that closely align themselves, albeit secretly, with Israeli strategic objectives. Those regimes have until now kept their views secret, in part because they thought disclosing them would be harmful. We will now see if they were right.

It is along the two shores of the Persian Gulf where the impact of the document release will reverberate most dangerously over the weeks and months to come.

It comes as no surprise that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sought to dismiss the significance of the revelations, calling them “worthless” and saying they will not affect Tehran’s relations with its Arab neighbors.

However, the Iranian public, and some government officials, may be surprised at the extent of the country’s isolation, and the level of mistrust that surrounds the Islamic Republic. The animosity against Iran undercuts claims by the regime that the pressure it faces emanates only from the West. The cables indeed show Western world leaders dripping with disdain for Tehran, with one French official describing Iran’s response to Western overtures as “a farce” and calling the Iranian regime a “fascist state.” But they also show Arab leaders calling Iran “evil” and “dangerous.” And, while it is true that bending the truth is far from unique to the Islamic Republic, it is startling to see how often Tehran is labeled untrustworthy by its neighbors. Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani explains the emirate’s relationship with Tehran as, “They lie to us, and we lie to them.” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak calls the Iranians “liars” and sponsors of terrorism.

Unlike Ahmadinejad, not all Iranians find the unfolding situation so easy to dismiss. The daily Mellat-e Ma said, “The publication of these documents heralds a worrying situation for Iran in the future.” The concern, said the paper, is that “Iran is facing an undeclared war by its neighbors who want a confrontation between Iran and America.”

There is a reason why Arab regimes kept their hostility toward Tehran quiet. Last summer, when the UAE ambassador to the U.S. told a reporter that his country favored an American attack on Iran, government officials quickly backtracked, saying the comments had been taken out of context. The clarification came as no surprise: Calls for an American attack come perilously close to qualifying as a casus belli between Iran and its neighbors.

Yet, in page after page of the Wikileaks documents, there is evidence that many of Tehran’s Arab neighbors want Washington to take military action against Iran. Ahmadinejad may choose to dismiss that unpleasant information, but it is now public knowledge. Deniability has been destroyed. This makes Iran and many of its neighbors open enemies, and in so doing, it increases the chances for war across that busy Middle Eastern waterway, the Persian Gulf. That may not shock the jaded residents of the region, but it could shake the world to its oil-thirsty foundations.

Frida Ghitis is an independent commentator on world affairs and a World Politics Review contributing editor. Her weekly column, World Citizen, appears every Thursday.

The Associated Press: Egypt considering nuclear arms if Iran gets them.

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s president would consider turning his country into a nuclear power if Iran acquired atomic weapons, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables revealed.

A cable from May 2008, one of hundreds of secret diplomatic documents released by the WikiLeaks website over the past week, described how President Hosni Mubarak told a U.S. Congressional delegation that everyone in the region was “terrified” of a nuclear Iran.

“Egypt might be forced to begin its own nuclear weapons program if Iran succeeds in those efforts,” the cable said in reporting about a meeting between Mubarak and the delegation on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Iran’s growing nuclear program, which it insists is only for peaceful energy production, has sent chills throughout the region and several Arab countries expressed their concern to the U.S. about it, included support for military strikes.

The head of Egypt’s intelligence service, Omar Suleiman, however, cautioned against military strikes against Iran in the same briefing, according to the cable. He said such an attack would not only leave Tehran’s nuclear capability intact but would unite its people against the U.S.

Instead he recommended pursuing sanctions.

In a meeting nearly a year later with the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, Suleiman does not shy away from describing Iran as a threat to the entire region.

He described Iran in an April 2009 cable as “very active” in Egypt, attempting to recruit Sinai Bedouins and smuggle arms and money into the Gaza Strip — measures he said Egypt was successfully combating.

The intelligence chief, who is Egypt’s chief interlocutor with the United States and neighboring Israel, added that he was conducting countermeasures of his own against Iranian influence, including recruiting agents in Iraq and Syria.

Egypt and Iran have had fraught relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and despite occasional tentative efforts at rapprochement, ties remain severed and the two regard each other as regional rivals.

A street in Tehran is also named after Khaled Islambouli, the assassin of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Suleiman offered the U.S. Egyptian assistance in taking on Iran around the region.

“If you want Egypt to cooperate with you on Iran, we will … it would take a big burden off our shoulders,” he said, according to the cable.

Leaks embarrassing, but fascinating | iran, nuclear, diplomats – Opinion – The Orange County Register.

There are a lot of red-faced diplomats in Washington and in embassies around the world today. Last weekend, the WikiLeaks Web site unleashed a mother lode of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, yanking back the curtain on what really happens behind the scenes.

AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

There’s hard-nosed back-room bargaining. Brutally candid assessments of foreign leaders, and alarming reports about metastasizing nuclear and terrorist threats from Iran and North Korea.

Yes, these leaks are embarrassing to many diplomats who expected their reports and opinions would remain private. But they are also fascinating reading for Americans who usually witness diplomats in public, smiling, shaking hands and issuing bromides about “frank exchanges.”

Want to know what the diplomats and world leaders think? What they said? Read these cables.

One important revelation: The U.S. and Israel have been loud and public in warning about Iran’s mounting nuclear threat. But Iran’s Arab neighbors? They’ve been silent. Now we learn from the leaked cables that the U.S. and Israel have a sotto voce Arab cheering section, urging a harder squeeze on Iran.

We learn that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urged the U.S. to attack Iran: “Cut off the head of the snake” before it is too late.

We hear King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain say “the danger of letting (Iran’s nuclear program) go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

And this blunt talk from Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan: “(Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”

Those aren’t the kinds of things Arab leaders say in public, for fear of angering Iran or inviting a backlash from their own populations. If only they would speak honestly to the world: A chorus of strong Arab voices would increase the current pressure on Iran to back off its nuclear ambitions.

The leaked cables also reveal the chilling news that the two remaining charter members of the Axis of Evil are active trading partners: North Korea sent Iran 19 advanced missiles, putting Western European capitals within Iran’s range for the first time.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the leaks on Monday as a ploy to make him look bad. He said “the countries in the region are like friends and brothers and these acts of mischief will not affect their relations.”

What he’s saying in private, well, we imagine it’s not so … diplomatic.

Chances are Iran already had pegged its friends and enemies in the region. But there are probably a lot of red, sputtering faces in Tehran today as evidence mounts of an effective campaign – from other countries? from within Iran? – to sabotage the country’s surging nuclear program.

Not a coincidence, Part I: Ahmadinejad admitted Monday that a computer virus known as Stuxnet has damaged Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges.

Not a coincidence, Part II. On Monday, one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was killed, and another injured, by bombs attached to their cars – allegedly by mysterious assailants on motorcycles.

On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the WikiLeaks document dump an attack on America and its allies. “It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.” she said.

We hope Clinton is exaggerating.

American diplomats may be embarrassed by these leaks. And WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange makes no secret that one of his missions is to expose and curb American power around the world.

But this time his method has backfired. These documents reveal an important truth: The U.S. and its allies, including Israel, are not alone in standing against Iran’s nuclear bull rush.

Much of the Middle East is rooting for America to stop Iran before it gets the bomb. And blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions also means stopping whatever assist Tehran gets from North Korea. There’s no secret about any of that anymore.

WikiLeaks cables: The Middle East fallout could be grave | Alan Dershowitz | Comment is free | The Guardian.

The disclosure of Arab views on Iran’s nuclear plans has made a military strike more likely

Arabs seen as alarmed by Iran in leaked US cables.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Leaked U.S. diplomatic memos have exposed a depth of alarm across the Middle East over the prospect of a nuclear–armed Iran that has never been expressed publicly: Arab leaders said to be urging that Iran be attacked if it refuses to concede to international demands.

Iran’s president scoffed Monday at revelations that its Arab neighbors have been lobbying the U.S. to use force — and also pointed the finger at Washington for mysterious bombings that killed one nuclear scientist and badly injured another.

But Israel trumpeted the State Department’s secret dispatches that were obtained by document discloser WikiLeaks as proof that Arabs agree Iran poses the chief danger in the region.

Starkly opposing views from Tehran and Tel Aviv are a fact of life in the Middle East. But in the harsh light — and often blunt words — of the massive release of the State Department cables, they are seen in a new context: Israel and Arab nations finding rare common ground and Iran’s leadership left to wonder whether it will now face a tougher line from across the Gulf.

It also could alter the tone of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Those are scheduled to resume Dec. 5 between Iran and world powers, including the United States, after a yearlong impasse that brought tighter U.N. and American sanctions on Tehran and some stinging blows — including international oil firms leaving Iran and Russia’s refusal to deliver a long–awaited anti–aircraft system to Iran’s military.

Iran has so far used delaying tactics and counterproposals to sidestep U.N.–drafted demands to halt its uranium enrichment in exchange for reactor–ready fuel from abroad. The revelations in the U.S. memos — including American claims that Iran obtained advance missiles from North Korea — could bring sharper calls for Iran to show signs of good–faith negotiations.

“What was said privately is now in the open,” said Sami Alfaraj, head of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. “The Arab world is growing tired of Iran as a source of instability and trying to force itself on Arab affairs. Iran maybe will face a stronger and more unified voices of opposition in the region.”

Arab worries have been expressed in public in careful, diplomatic language with the emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy.

The accounts of meetings with Arab leaders in some of the State Department cables, however, suggest a sense of growing urgency and frustration over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its stonewalling tactics against international mediation and snubbing of President Barack Obama’s attempts at outreach.

One message said Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa — whose nation hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet — “argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their (Iran’s) nuclear program, by whatever means necessary. That program must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

Another quoted Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, telling a U.S. official that the options are to either “bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won’t matter.”

Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince in the UAE’s emirate of Abu Dhabi, called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “young and aggressive” and believed “this guy is going to take us to war. … It’s a matter of time.”

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was described as referring repeatedly to Iranians as “liars” and denouncing them for trying to export a Shiite “revolution” across the mostly Sunni Muslim Middle East.

But perhaps the strongest views resonated from Saudi Arabia, the cornerstone U.S. ally in the Gulf and the main counterweight against Iran.

One cable described how Saudi’s King Adbullah often urged a U.S.–led attack against Iran to “cut off the head of the snake” and cripple its nuclear weapons program, which Saudi officials and other fear could touch off a frightening nuclear arms race in the region.

Such calls for another Middle East war — just as the long Iraqi fight is drawing down — certainly don’t mean a consensus across the region. Nations such as Qatar have tried to play a mediator role between Iran and Arab states, and Dubai’s leaders will instinctively resist anything that could disrupt its critical trading ties with Iran.

The leaked documents could take center stage at next week’s summit of the six–nation Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Abu Dhabi. In an unusual twist, the more the Gulf leaders complain about Iran, the more their priorities overlap with Israel’s.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that a unified front with Arab nations against Iran could produce a “breakthrough” in efforts to bring peace to the region.

“The greatest threat to world peace stems from the arming of the regime in Iran. More and more states, governments and leaders in the Middle East and in far reaches of the world understand this is a fundamental threat,” Netanyahu told a news conference in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu said it’s clear other countries in the region share Israel’s assessment about Iran “even if what they say in public is not what they always say in private.”

If “leaders will say in public what they say in private, there might be a breakthrough,” he added. “Leaders should be ready to tell their people the truth.”

In one U.S. memo, American envoys tell Russian security officials they believe Iran acquired missiles from North Korea. The missiles, the Americans claim, would nearly double the reach of Tehran’s arsenal and cover Moscow and capitals in Western Europe.

In Tehran, however, Ahmadinejad struck back by calling the State Department cables “mischief” aimed at trying to sour Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbors.

“We don’t give any value to these documents,” Ahmadinejad told a news conference. “It’s without legal value. Iran and regional states are friends. Such acts of mischief have no impact on relations between nations.”

Arab nations just across the Persian Gulf are known to be wary of Iran’s rising regional influence, military power and nuclear activity. The leaked documents, however, reveal a much higher degree of alarm in the calls for U.S. military action.

Ahmadinejad questioned the credibility of the information in the U.S. documents and accused Washington of pursuing a strategy resembling “an intelligence and psychological war game.”

He also accused Israel and the United States of being behind attacks on two nuclear scientists in Tehran, where assailants on motorcycles attached magnetized bombs to their cars in separate incidents. One scientist was killed, the other injured.

The wounded scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, is specified by a 2007 U.N. resolution for sanctions because of suspected links to secret nuclear activities, describing him as a Defense Ministry scientist. Iranian media said he was a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the country’s strongest military force.

The scientist who was killed, Majid Shahriari, does not appear in any U.N. resolutions and was involved in a major project with Iran’s nuclear agency, said the agency’s chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, although he did not give specifics.

Asked about the Iranian accusations, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel did not comment on such matters.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, speaking to reporters in Washington, said: “We decry acts of terrorism, wherever they occur. And beyond that, we do not have any information on what happened.”

There was no clear indication of the direction of the Iranian investigation into the attacks, and there was no immediate claims of responsibility.

Monday’s attacks bore close similarities to one in January that killed Tehran University physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi. He died when a bomb–rigged motorcycle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work.

___

Associated Press (News – Alert) writers Dan Perry in Jerusalem, Matt Lee in Washington and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.