Jacqueline Novogratz: Inspiring a life of immersion | Video on TED.com.

Michelle…

So proud of you.  So proud you like me.

Love,

Joe

Support a free Iran.

Clashes that broke out in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashhad and more than two dozen other cities across Iran Monday were a fresh reminder to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the reformists are still alive and kicking.

The murderous brutality of the Basij paramilitary forces and the Revolutionary Guard, which resulted in the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, stalled the June 2009 uprising. The Obama administration pulled back support for the Green Movement out of a misconceived calculation that this would help diplomatic attempts to “engage” and convince the regime to abandon its nuclear program.

But the discontent that was hugely exacerbated by the blatantly rigged presidential elections continued to burn.

This time, the US State Department has changed its approach, sending Twitter messages in Farsi in support of the protesters and accusing the Iranian leadership of hypocrisy for supporting the anti-government revolt in Egypt while seeking to snuff out opposition at home. The rhetoric is important, but the US also needs to offer financial, technological and logistic support to the reformists.

A POPULAR uprising, capable of toppling Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, would also be the most effective way of preventing this apocalyptic regime from getting its hands on the bomb. Sanctions are biting, but Tehran is so far undeterred.

And a US-led military option is looking increasingly unlikely. With US influence in the Middle East diminishing, Persian Gulf nations from which the US might launch a strike have been hedging their bets with Iran.

Last week, the Saudis accepted a port visit by Iranian warships in the Red Sea. In December, Qatar hosted a visit by three Iranian warships and a military delegation. In August, the Bahraini foreign minister announced that his country would not allow its territory to be used as a base for offensive operations.

Israel’s options have also narrowed. The IDF’s capacity to send ships and submarines through the Suez Canal is less certain with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Coordinating air routes through Jordan and Saudi Arabia or through Turkey is out of the question for the time being as well.

Besides, a military attack would have the unwanted side effect of unifying the Iranian people.

THE IRANIAN opposition has shown admirable staying power. On December 27, reformists took to the streets on the seventh day of mourning for their late spiritual leader Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, which coincided with the Ashura, a day of sorrow for Shi’ites commemorating the martyrdom in battle of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Although they avoided the use of guns, the regime’s security forces brutally beat demonstrators and ran them over with cars, resulting in eight fatalities. Those deaths will undoubtedly be tied in the collective memories of the opposition with the Ashura.

Mehdi Karrubi, one of the leaders of the Green Movement, noted at the time that even the reviled Shah’s regime had not dared to shed blood on such a holy day.

Karrubi was directly attacking the religious legitimacy of the ruling regime – an act of defiance that culminated on Tuesday with members of the Iranian parliament demanding his execution for orchestrating Monday’s protests.

The Mullahs have tried unsuccessfully to stifle the Green Movement through brute force, overwhelming demonstrators with scores of plainclothes and uniformed forces armed with clubs. The latest strategy has been the intimidation of reformist leaders by the killing or imprisonment of relatives. The nephew of former prime minister and Green Movement leader Mir-Hussein Mousavi was assassinated, and 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi’s sister arrested. The execution of Mousavi, a regime-legitimated presidential candidate less than 20 months ago, was also demanded on Tuesday. Nevertheless, the struggle for freedom goes on.

“They want freedom,” Uri Lubrani, adviser on Iran to Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, told Army Radio.

“What I see in Iran is that the majority of the people have had enough of this regime.” Lubrani, a former ambassador to Iran, warned in 1978 that the Shah’s regime was on the verge of being overthrown, but was ignored. Now Lubrani feels the same way about the present regime. “I have no intelligence to support my contention,” Lubrani said, “but I feel it’s going to happen.” Veteran Iran-born broadcaster Menashe Amir told this newspaper on Monday that he saw in the latest protests “the first spark of revolution.”

Whether such analyses are vindicated depends in part on the courage of the opposition, and in part, too, on the nature of the international response.

Iran is not Egypt. Its leadership – motivated by an extremist view of Islam, hostile to the free world and to democratic values, and seeking to render itself impregnable via nuclear arms – will not subside without a bloody fight. Led by the US, the international community must lend its support to the mass of Iranians straining to be freed from the regime’s benighted and ruthless clutches.

Netanyahu to Nasrallah: Stay in your bunker.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s speech at the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations gathering in Jerusalem.

“Whoever hides in a bunker should stay in the bunker,” Netanyahu said. “No one should doubt Israel’s strength or its ability to defend itself”

“We have a strong army,” he added. “We seek peace with all of our neighbors, but the IDF is prepared to defend Israel from any of its enemies.”

Netanyahu also discussed the protests in Egypt.

“No one knows what the future holds for Egypt,” he said. “In Washington they don’t know, in Tehran they don’t know, and even the columnists in The New York Times don’t know.”

Netanyahu added that “Israel is interested in a democratic Egypt that will live peacefully with its neighbors.”

“On the other hand, the leaders in Tehran want to see a different Egypt,” he explained, “that is ruled by Iranians that oppress human rights. They don’t want an Egypt that looks to the 21st century, but one that looks to the ninth century.”

The prime minister added that an “Egypt that supports Iran will support terror.”

Lieberman: Iran warships destined for Syria to sail through Suez – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The foreign minister criticizes the international community for not dealing with ‘recurring Iranian provocations’; Iran has been accused of supplying weapons to Syria and Hezbollah.

By Barak Ravid

Two Iranian warships planned to sail through the Suez Canal en route to Syria on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, calling the move the latest “provocation” by Tehran and hinting at an Israeli response.

“Tonight, two Iranian warships are meant to pass through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea and reach Syria, something that has not happened in many years,” Lieberman said in a Jerusalem speech distributed by his office.

The remarks suggest that the ships are able to pass through the Egypt-controlled Suez Canal, now that the government of former Prime Minister Hosni Mubarak has been overturned.

“To my regret, the international community is not showing readiness to deal with the recurring Iranian provocations. The international community must understand that Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations,” the foreign minister said.

Israel has accused Syria and Iran in the past of paying for and smuggling weapons to the Lebanese Shi’ite group, Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006

These accusations have been validated in the past, such as in 2009, when United States soldiers stationed in the Gulf of Suez discovered containers of ammunition aboard a German-owned cargo ship allegedly transporting the arms from Iran to Syria. The discovery was reported by the German daily newspaper Der Spiegel.

The ammunition, which comprised 7.62 millimeter bullets suitable for Kalashnikov rifles, was believed to have been intended for either the Syrian army or Hezbollah.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 16, 2011, 8:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iranian warships dock at Jeddah

Twenty-four hours after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the Egyptian upheaval had no military connotations for Israel, the Iranian frigate Alvand and cruiser Kharg transited the Suez Canal on their way to Syria Wednesday night, Feb. 16. Their passage was termed “a provocation” by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. In Beirut, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said he was looking forward to Israel going to war on Lebanon because then his men would capture Galilee.
Israel was closely monitoring the Iranian flotilla, whose visit to the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah on Feb. 6 was first revealed exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 481 on February 10.

Up until now, Saudi Arabia, in close conjunction with Egypt and its President Hosni Mubarak, led the Sunni Arab thrust to contain Iranian expansion – especially in the Persian Gulf. However, the opening of a Saudi port to war ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the first time in the history of their relations points to a fundamental shift in Middle East trends in consequence of the Egyptian uprising.  It was also the first time Cairo has permitted Iranian warships to transit Suez from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, although Israeli traffic in the opposite direction had been allowed.
Iran made no secret of its plants to expand its naval and military presence beyond the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to the Mediterranean via Suez: On February 2, Iran’s Deputy Navy Commander Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Biqam announced the flotilla’s mission was to “enter the waters of the Red Sea and then be dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea.”

However, Israeli military intelligence which failed to foresee the Egyptian upheaval and its policy-makers ignored the Iranian admiral’s announcement and its strategic import, just as they failed to heed the significance of the Iranian flotilla’s docking in Jeddah.
debkafile‘s military sources report that Iran is rapidly seizing the fall of the Mubarak regime in Cairo and the Saudi King Abdullah’s falling-out with President Barack Obama (see debkafile of Feb. 10, 2011) as an opportunity not to be missed for establishing a foothold along the Suez Canal and access to the Mediterranean for six gains:

1. To cut off, even partially, the US military and naval Persian Gulf forces from their main route for supplies and reinforcements;
2. To establish an Iranian military-naval grip on the Suez Canal, through which 40 percent of the world’s maritime freights pass every day:
3. To bring an Iranian military presence close enough to menace the Egyptian heartland of Cairo and the Nile Delta and squeeze it into joining the radical Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish alliance;
4. To thread a contiguous Iranian military-naval line from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip and up to the ports of Lebanon, where Hizballah has already seized power and toppled the pro-West government.
5. To eventually sever the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, annex it to the Gaza Strip and establish a large Hamas-ruled Palestinian state athwart the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.
By comparison, a Fatah-led Palestinian state on the West Bank within the American orbit be politically and strategically inferior.
6. To tighten the naval and military siege on Israel.

Iranian Recovery from Stuxnet Means Nuclear Threat Is Back on Front Burner « Commentary Magazine.

Suez Canal Dispute: Iran Warships To Sail Through Suez, Israel Warns.

JERUSALEM, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Two Iranian warships planned to sail through the Suez canal en route to Syria on Wednesday, Israel’s foreign minister said, calling the move the latest “provocation” by Tehran and hinting at an Israeli response.

Israel sees a major threat in Iran’s nuclear programme and calls for its elimination, but the countries’ geographical distance has kept them from open confrontation. Syria is one of Israel’s neighbouring foes and an ally of Tehran.

“Tonight, two Iranian warships are meant to pass through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea and reach Syria, something that has not happened in many years,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a Jerusalem speech distributed by his office.

“To my regret, the international community is not showing readiness to deal with the recurring Iranian provocations. The international community must understand that Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations.” (Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility recovered quickly from Stuxnet cyberattack.

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 16, 2011

VIENNA – In an underground chamber near the Iranian city of Natanz, a network of surveillance cameras offers the outside world a rare glimpse into Iran’s largest nuclear facility. The cameras were installed by U.N. inspectors to keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear progress, but last year they recorded something unexpected: workers hauling away crate after crate of broken equipment.

In a six-month period between late 2009 and last spring, U.N. officials watched in amazement as Iran dismantled more than 10 percent of the Natanz plant’s 9,000 centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium. Then, just as remarkably, hundreds of new machines arrived at the plant to replace the ones that were lost.

The story told by the video footage is a shorthand recounting of the most significant cyberattack to date on a nuclear installation. Records of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, show Iran struggling to cope with a major equipment failure just at the time its main uranium enrichment plant was under attack by a computer worm known as Stuxnet, according to Europe-based diplomats familiar with the records.

But the IAEA’s files also show a feverish – and apparently successful – effort by Iranian scientists to contain the damage and replace broken parts, even while constrained by international sanctions banning Iran from purchasing nuclear equipment. An IAEA report due for release this month is expected to show steady or even slightly elevated production rates at the Natanz enrichment plant over the past year.

“They have been able to quickly replace broken machines,” said a Western diplomat with access to confidential IAEA reports. Despite the setbacks, “the Iranians appeared to be working hard to maintain a constant, stable output” of low-enriched uranium, said the official, who like other diplomats interviewed for this article insisted on anonymity to discuss the results of the U.N. watchdog’s data collection.

The IAEA’s findings, combined with new analysis of the Stuxnet worm by independent experts, offer a mixed portrait of the mysterious cyberattack that briefly shut down parts of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure last year. The new reports shed light on the design of the worm and how it spread through a string of Iranian companies before invading the control systems of Iran’s most sensitive nuclear installations.

But they also put a spotlight on the effectiveness of the attack in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. A draft report by Washington-based nuclear experts concludes that the net impact was relatively minor.

“While it has delayed the Iranian centrifuge program at the Natanz plant in 2010 and contributed to slowing its expansion, it did not stop it or even delay the continued buildup of low-enriched uranium,” the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in the draft, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.

The worm’s effect

The ISIS report acknowledges that the worm may have undercut Iran’s nuclear program in ways that cannot be easily quantified. While scientists were able to replace the broken centrifuge machines this time, Iran is thought to have finite supplies of certain kinds of high-tech metals needed to make the machines, ISIS concluded. In addition, the worm almost certainly exacted a psychological toll, as Iran’s leaders discovered that their most sensitive nuclear facility had been penetrated by a computer worm whose designers possessed highly detailed knowledge of Natanz’s centrifuges and how they are interconnected, said David Albright, a co-author of the report.

“If nothing else, it hit their confidence,” said Albright, ISIS’s president, “and it will make them feel more vulnerable in the future.”

The creator of the Stuxnet computer malware remains unknown. Many computer security experts suspect that U.S. and Israeli intelligence operatives were behind the cyberattack, but government officials in the United States and Israel have acknowledged only that Iran’s nuclear program appears to have suffered technical setbacks in recent months.

While Israel’s government has previously said Iran was on the brink of acquiring a bomb, the country’s outgoing intelligence chief estimated last month that the Islamic republic could not have a bomb before 2015. Other intelligence agencies have said Iran could obtain nuclear weapons in less than a year if it kicks out U.N. inspectors and launches a crash program. Iran denies it is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

Stuxnet was discovered this summer by computer security companies that eventually documented its spread to tens of thousands of computers on three continents. While the worm appears to spread easily, an analysis of its coding revealed that it was harmless to most systems.

The computer security firm Symantec, which authored several detailed studies of the malware, found that Stuxnet was designed to target types of computers known as programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, used in certain kinds of industrial processes.

Moreover, the worm activates itself only when it detects the precise array of equipment that exists in Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz. The underground plant contains thousands of centrifuges, machines that spin at supersonic speeds to create low-enriched uranium, which is used to make fuel for nuclear power plants. With further processing, the machines can produce the highly enriched uranium used in nuclear bombs.

Stuxnet followed a circuitous route to Natanz, according to an analysis by Symantec. Initially it targeted computer systems at five Iranian companies with no direct ties to Iran’s nuclear program. Then it spread, computer to computer, until it landed in the centrifuge plant.

Once inside the enrichment plant, Stuxnet essentially hijacked the plant’s control system, causing the centrifuges to spin so rapidly that they began to break.

ISIS and Symantec analysts concluded that the Natanz facility was attacked twice by the worm, once in late 2009 and again in the spring. By autumn, when Iranian officials confirmed the attack, the damage was so severe that the plant had to be briefly shut down.

“An electronic war has been launched against Iran,” said Mahmoud Liaii, director of the Information Technology Council of the Ministry of Industries and Mines.

As the attack was underway, IAEA inspectors were able to gauge its effectiveness by counting the carcasses of damaged centrifuges being hauled out of the facility. Under an agreement with the Tehran government, the watchdog agency is allowed to operate a network of surveillance cameras aimed at each of the plant’s portals, to guard against possible nuclear cheating by Iran. Any equipment that passes through the doors is captured on video, and IAEA inspectors arrive later to eyeball each item.

Machines leaving plant

Iran’s centrifuges are notoriously unreliable, but over a few months last year the flow of broken machines leaving the plant spiked, far beyond normal levels. Two European diplomats with access to the agency’s files put the number at 900 to 1,000.

IAEA inspectors who examined the machines could not ascertain why the centrifuges had failed. Iranian officials told the agency they were replacing machines that had been idled for several months and needed refurbishing. Whatever the reason, the plant’s managers worked frantically to replace each piece of equipment they removed, the two European diplomats confirmed.

“They were determined that the IAEA’s reports would not show any drop in production,” one of the diplomats said.

While U.S. officials declined to comment on the major equipment failure at Natanz, the speed of Iran’s apparent recovery from its technical setbacks did not go unnoticed. “They have overcome some of the obstacles, in some cases through sheer application of resources,” said U.S. Ambassador Glyn Davies, Washington’s representative to the IAEA in Vienna. “There’s clearly a very substantial political commitment.”

Still far from clear is whether Iran has truly beaten the malware. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a November statement acknowledging the attack, said the worm had been quickly contained and eliminated. But independent analysts are not as sure.

Albright and other nuclear experts discounted news reports suggesting that the worm posed a serious safety threat to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. But the ISIS and Symantec reports noted that parts of the malware’s operating code appeared to be unfinished, and Stuxnet has been updated with new instructions at least once since its release.

IAEA inspectors were unable to determine whether Iran’s efforts to erase the worm from its equipment had succeeded, raising the possibility of subsequent attacks.

Albright said it was possible that the Natanz facility could become infected a second time, since so many computers in Iran – an estimated 60,000 or more – are known to have been affected. But he questioned whether the worm’s limited success so far justifies the use of a tactic that will probably provoke retaliation.

“Stuxnet is now a model code for all to copy and modify to attack other industrial facilities,” Albright wrote in the ISIS report. “Its discovery likely increased the risk of similar cyberattacks against the United States and its allies.”

 

Surveillance Footage and Code Clues Indicate Stuxnet Hit Iran | Threat Level | Wired.com.

New clues about Stuxnet provide the strongest evidence yet that the superworm targeted a nuclear enrichment plant in Iran, according to a new report.

The clues come from surveillance cameras installed by international investigators at the Natanz enrichment plant in Iran – which show Iranian workers feverishly replacing damaged equipment during the time Stuxnet is believed to have attacked the plant. Other clues appear in the attack code itself, showing that the worm targeted a configuration that researchers now say match precisely the centrifuge setup at Natanz. And still more clues are found in connection to five organizations that researchers say were first targeted by the worm before it hit Natanz.

The findings come in a report released Tuesday (.pdf) by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which says that while Stuxnet may have hit Natanz, its impact on Iran’s nuclear program was not detrimental.

Stuxnet was discovered last June by researchers at a security firm in Belarus who found it on infected machines belonging to customers in Iran. Recent reports have indicated that the malware was developed by a U.S. government lab and tested in Israel before being unleashed.

Although researchers have believed for months that Natanz was the attack target, the belief has largely been based on circumstantial evidence and unreliable reports from Iranian officials that Natanz was hit by unspecified malware.

But the new clues are “the best evidence” that Stuxnet was aimed at Natanz, according to ISIS founder and former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright.

According to researchers, Stuxnet has two attack sequences, one that targets a Siemens S7-417 programmable logic controller (PLC) and one that attacks a Siemens S7-315 PLC. PLCs control functions in industrial facilities, such as the speed at which a rotor operates.

Previous research indicated that the so-called 315 attack-code changed the frequency of frequency converters. Because the frequencies specified in the code matched frequencies at which Natanz centrifuges are known to break, it was believed that Natanz’s centrifuges were the target.

But new analysis of the 417 code seems to solidify this. Back in December, ISIS revealed in a previous report that Natanz’s centrifuges are grouped into “cascades” consisting of 164 centrifuges each, and that six cascades appeared to have been affected by Stuxnet. German security researcher Ralph Langner saw the numbers and recognized them from the 417 attack code. The code is designed to control six groupings of 164 devices.

“This evidence is perhaps the strongest evidence that Stuxnet is aimed at Natanz,” Albright told Threat Level. “We were kind of stunned by it actually.”

The 417 attack-code is non-operational, however, and is missing key components that would tell researchers what exactly it’s supposed to do to the devices it’s targeting. Researchers believe the attackers were still developing the attack code. As the code currently stands, the attack, which involves turning something on or shutting it off, is designed to run for about seven minutes and repeat about every 35 days.

ISIS speculates in its reporter that the attack may involve fast-acting valves on the centrifuges that, if closed suddenly, could damage the centrifuges and cause gas pressure to build.

Although the 417 code wasn’t working in the malware that struck Iran, the 315 attack-code on its own was enough to cause damage at Natanz, Albright says. This appears to be reinforced by surveillance videos that investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency viewed.

Nuclear experts with the IAEA previously determined that Iran experienced difficulties with about 1,000 centrifuges in November 2009, but the experts didn’t know the cause. Iran had tried to downplay the replacement of the centrifuges, suggesting they were removed before they were up and running, as if Iranian workers had simply discovered flaws in them before they were turned on. But it turns out that surveillance cameras that caught Iranian workers swapping out the equipment, suggests a different story.

In August 2009, Iran agreed to let the IAEA install surveillance cameras outside the enrichment facility to monitor any equipment that moved in or out. Suddenly, over a six-month period beginning late 2009, U.N. officials monitoring the surveillance images “watched in amazement” as Iranian workers “dismantled more than 10 percent of the plant’s 9,000 centrifuge machines used to enrich uranium,” according to the Washington Post. “Then, just as remarkably, hundreds of new machines arrived at the plant to replace the ones that were lost.”

Investigators described the effort as a feverish attempt to contain damage and replace broken parts, suggesting the centrifuges had indeed been operational when they broke.

“That it was 1,000 centrifuges and that it happened over a short period of time and the Iranians were upset about it” indicates the centrifuges were spinning or under vacuum – a preparation stage – when they broke, says Albright. “Because of the surprise and rapidity of all this happening, it indicates this.”

One other piece of information suggests Iran’s nuclear program was the target of Natanz. Last week security firm Symantec released a report revealing that the Stuxnet attack targeted five organizations in Iran that were infected first in an effort to spread the malware to Natanz.

Because Natanz’s PLCs are not connected to the internet, the best hope of attacking them – short of planting a mole inside Natanz – was infecting other computers that could serve as a gateway to the Natanz PLC. For example, infecting computers belonging to a contractor in charge of installing software at Natanz could help get the malware onto the Natanz system.

Symantec said the companies were hit in attacks in June and July 2009 and in March, April and May 2010. Symantec didn’t name the five organizations but said that they all “have a presence in Iran” and are involved in industrial processes.

Albright managed to glean from discussions with Symantec that some of the companies are involved in the acquisition and assembling of PLCs. What’s more, Symantec researchers told Albright that they found the names of some of the companies on suspect entity lists – lists of firms and organizations suspected of violating non-proliferation agreements by procuring parts for Iran’s nuclear program.

“They are companies that are involved probably in illegal smuggling operations to get this equipment for Natanz,” Albright told Threat Level. “We think they’re involved in acquiring the PLCs and then putting them together in a system with software that can work at Natanz.”

Symantec wasn’t available for comment.

Though the work that went into creating Stuxnet was monumental, the ISIS report ultimately concludes that its effect on Iran’s nuclear program was moderate.

“While it has delayed the Iranian centrifuge program at the Natanz plant in 2010 and contributed to slowing its expansion, it did not stop it or even delay the continued buildup of [low-enriched uranium],” the report says.

Albright does say, though, that the attack has taxed Iran’s supply of raw materials to make centrifuges and therefore could have a longer-range effect.

Due to sanctions, Iran has had trouble obtaining materials to build centrifuges and can only build between 12,000-15,000. As of November 2009, it had deployed 10,000 centrifuges at Natanz, although 1,000 were damaged and replaced during routine operations. Another 1,000 were replaced in the November scramble believed to be caused by Stuxnet. Iran’s centrifuges are prone to breakage even under the best of circumstances, Albright says, but with the aid of Stuxnet, the end of the country’s supply grew a little closer.

Iran opposition leader ‘ready to pay any price’ for change.

An Iranian opposition leader who became the target of death threats by lawmakers said Wednesday that he is willing to pay any price for trying to bring democratic change to the country.

Hard-line lawmakers called for Mahdi Karroubi and two other prominent pro-reform figures to be brought to trial and put to death in response to demonstrations earlier in the week. Two protesters were killed in clashes with police in the demonstrations.

Karroubi said Wednesday on his website, sahamnews.net, that he was willing to “pay any price” to bring social and political changes to Iran. He is one of several leaders of a protest movement that grew out of the disputed presidential election in 2009.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed the seriousness of protests against his regime, saying that the demonstrations are “going nowhere,” in an interview on Iranian state television.

“It is clear the Iranian nation has enemies because it is a nation that wants to shine, conquer peaks and change relations,” Ahmadinejad stated.

He acknowledged that “there is a lot of hostility against the government,” but said the protests’ organizers “just wanted to tarnish the Iranian nation’s brilliance.”

“It is a shining sun. They threw some dust towards the sun… but the dust will return to their eyes,” the Iranian president said.

Clashes between protesters and Iranian security forces in Tehran left two people dead and several wounded on Monday.

Earlier Tuesday, US President Barack Obama blasted the Iranian regime for suppressing protesters and called on those taking to the streets to show courage in their pursuit for greater freedom.

“My hope and expectation is that we’re going to continue to see the people of Iran have the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms and a more representative government,” Obama said at a press conference, comparing the demonstrations in Iran with those that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak from office on Friday.