WarSclerotic

Who was behind the Stuxnet attack? — Defense Systems.

Investigative tools no match for sophisticated attacks

• By Kevin Coleman
• Mar 02, 2011

Yes, this is yet another article about Stuxnet. But it is unlike many of the others that have been written. Just run a Google search on Stuxnet, and you will see what I mean. In preparing for this article, I got 3.8 million Google results when I searched for “Stuxnet.” I bet there have been a few added since then.

In looking at the search results, a large percentage of the articles deal with the technical aspects of the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear program. A similar percentage deals with the political aspects and reasons behind the Stuxnet cyberattack, in addition to the time margin created by the attack. However, there is another area that has become quite popular and is arguably the fastest-growing area of the Stuxnet subject matter. This has been a favorite topic of spy thrillers and espionage stories throughout history: who done it?

A number of articles have been posted that discuss attribution for this cyberattack. Attribution is tricky — I’ve been there and made that mistake. The articles actually named China, Israel, United Kingdom and the United States as being behind what has come to be known as the most sophisticated cyber weapon and attack seen to date, at least in the public domain.

Although it’s true that all of these countries have the capacity and know-how needed to create Stuxnet, they also have the technical knowledge needed to cloak their activities and mask the identities often found in the code artifacts of cyber weapons. It is amazing to see the number of small and midsize organizations with limited resources that release articles and reports that name who is behind Stuxnet. The egos and attitudes that combine to make the authors believe they have the intelligence assets, resources, knowledge and capabilities to compete with the thought leaders in the weaponry and strategies of digital conflict that created Stuxnet are gigantic.

Do they really think they have what’s necessary to unravel the mysteries behind the Stuxnet code if it were developed by China’s State Security Ministry, Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s MI6 or our CIA? These same reporters and organizations, when pushed for evidence, offer little or no substance behind their attribution, and when cornered, most fall back to the position, “They [meaning who the security firm believes was behind the attack] had motive.”

In July 2010, the House Science and Technology Committee’s Technology and Innovation Subcommittee held a hearing and discussed cyberattack attribution technology and its importance. The subcommittee discussed current and future research and development needs. There was little disagreement that the tools and techniques needed for attribution are in the very early stage of development and are gradually evolving. The big problem is these tools are evolving slower than the advanced threats we are seeing introduced into the cyber domain on a regular basis. Having stellar cyber attribution capabilities will serve as a big deterrent to acts of cyber aggression. Today, there is little concern about attribution for those nations in the top tier of offensive cyber capabilities.

The Stuxnet cyberattack has all the makings of a 21^st-century spy thriller, but the harsh reality is that this is just a glimpse of what’s to come. Stuxnet should serve as an early warning to all industrialized nations about the risk that cyberattacks pose to our infrastructure and way of life. By most accounts, it was successful and achieved its mission — delaying Iran’s nuclear enrichment efforts. It is highly unlikely that we will find out anytime soon who was behind Stuxnet. There is a short list of those who have the intelligence assets needed to carry this out and infect the Iranian nuclear equipment in addition to the technical assets to design and develop the code, plus all the goodies they included that mislead and misdirect all those investigating and think they know who was behind it. After all this, I can’t wait for the movie.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 3, 2011, 11:09 AM (GMT+02:00)

Saudis brace for first protest demo

Ahead of the first Day of Anger planned in Saudi Arabia for March 11, a senior Iranian figure close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Riyadh Wednesday, March 2, against launching preventive security measures against, or cracking down on, the kingdom’s two million Shiites who live and work in the oil regions of the east.

The world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia covers 40 percent of the world’s oil needs.

Saudi and other Gulf security sources called the Iranian warning unprecedented interference in the domestic affairs of Saudi Arabia and a call to the Shiite minority to rise up against the throne under the shield of Iran’s protection. It also struck the match for reigniting Shiite riots in Bahrain, fomenting the Shiite minorities in other Gulf emirates and further complicating the explosive situation in Yemen.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came forward for the first time in the three-month wave of Arab uprisings to accuse Iran of using its Lebanese surrogate Hizballah to shape events in the Arab world. Addressing the Senate Budget Committee Wednesday, March 2, she said “They are doing everything they can to influence the outcomes in these places,” she said, citing Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and the Palestinians, though not Saudi Arabia. “They are using Hizballah to communicate with counterparts. … in (the Palestinian movement) Hamas who then in turn communicate with counterparts in Egypt.”

debkafile‘s Washington sources note that the allegations she leveled against Iran contradicted the position taken by the Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, who has said repeatedly in the last couple of weeks that the uprisings had domestic origins and Iran was not stirring the pot.

Clinton’s words also countered the view presented by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on March 1that the unrest in Arab countries was a major setback for Iran and al Qaeda.

The Obama administration is clearly divided on its reading of the upheavals in Arab countries and the role played in them by Iran, indicating that as the disturbances go into their third month, a consistent policy has yet to be formulated in the White House.

The warning to Riyadh came from Iranian parliament Mohammed Dehgan, one of the closest and most influential members of the Ahmadinejad circle. It was couched in stark and brutal terms: “The Saudi leadership should know that the Saudi people have become vigilant and do not allow the rulers of the country to commit any possible crime against them,” said Dehqan. “Saudi Arabia should account for the suppressions of the Shiite and Sunni people in the country for numerous years.”

He went on to threaten that Saudi Arabia, whose Shiite minority accounted for at least 15 percent of its population, could be the next target of the revolution engulfing the Arab world. The Iranian lawmaker went on to warn Saudi Arabia against interfering in the course of events in Bahrain and Yemen.

Dehqan and other senior Iranian officials have also warned Saudi Arabia to stop taking the fingerprints of Iranians entering the kingdom – or face reprisals.

debkafile‘s Gulf sources find three major implications in the harsh Iranian warning to Riyadh:

1. Tehran is for the first time taking an overt stand on the Arab uprisings, using their Shiite minorities as levers of manipulation.

2. Iran is flexing muscle for the first time in the role it covets of regional superpower which calls the shots for the oil states and challenges US supremacy.

3. Iran wants Riyadh to call off the preventive measures Saudi security and intelligence have been conducting for some days to offset a Shiite uprising on the Day of Anger, including the arrests of political and religious activists.

Iran opposition says 79 arrested in protests regime denies taking place – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Renewed demonstrations demand the release of imprisoned ‘Green movement’ leaders; security forces deployed in large numbers to prevent repeat of 2009 unrest.

By Reuters

Iran’s opposition said at least 79 people were arrested at protest rallies on Tuesday that the government denied had taken place at all.

Authorities have deployed large numbers of security forces to prevent any repeat of the massive unrest that followed hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2009 re-election, and on Wednesday state media made no mention of Tuesday’s rallies.

	An Iranian protester demands the release of Iranian opposition leaders outside the United Nations office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 2, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

Opposition websites said thousands of people demonstrated in Tehran and other cities to demand the release of “Green movement” leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi who they believe were taken from their homes last week and jailed.

Prosecutor-General Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei denied the arrests, saying both men were still in their homes but were being prevented from communicating with the outside world.

According to opposition website Sahamnews, at least 79 people were arrested on Tuesday. Sites said some 1,500 were arrested on February 14 during the Green movement’s first rally in more than a year, which was called to show support for pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa.

The police said “dozens” of people were arrested on February 14, and a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the events said only small groups of trouble-makers turned up.

Talking of events on Tuesday, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told reporters: “A limited number of people, influenced by anti-revolutionary groups, were intending to do something.”

“No specific incident happened on Tuesday in Tehran,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Dolatabadi declined to give the number of arrests.

Pretext

Despite the official line that there has been no significant resurgence of the Green movement, which the government considers to be a seditious plot guided by its Western foes, parliament has called for Mousavi and Karoubi to be tried and hanged.

Two people were shot dead on February 14, deaths that each side has blamed on the other.

The parliamentary report, issued on Wednesday, accused Mousavi and Karoubi of staging the February 14 rally at the encouragement of U.S., British and Israeli intelligence.

“Foreign intelligence services had contacts with the sedition leaders urging them to call for a rally in support of popular uprising in Egypt and Tunisia … as a pretext to create tension in the country,” said the report, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Opposition leaders deny such accusations.

Iranian government leaders have hailed uprisings in several Arab states as part of an “Islamic awakening” inspired by the 1979 revolution which ousted the Western-backed Shah.

Analysts outside Iran say the uprisings have been overwhelmingly secular, not religious, in nature.

The Iranian opposition took those pro-democracy protests as inspiration to stage its own first significant show of vitality since December 2009 street protests, which were crushed by the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Mousavi and Karoubi — reformists who lost to Ahmadinejad in the June 2009 election — were held in their homes, incommunicado, after they called for the rally. Authorities warned such “illegal” gatherings would not be tolerated.

Opposition website Kaleme said it believed Mousavi and Karoubi and their wives were secretly whisked from their homes last Thursday and taken to Heshmatiyeh prison in Tehran.

The authorities’ reluctance to confirm their whereabouts shows the sensitivity of taking aggressive action against men who remain rallying points for opposition to Ahmadinejad.

Syria agrees to allow UN nuclear inspectors into acid plant – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The agreement is unlikely to satisfy Western concerns over Syria blocking IAEA requests for access to desert site which Israel reportedly bombed in 2007.

By Reuters

Syria has agreed to allow United Nations nuclear inspectors into an acid purification plant where uranium concentrates have also been made, a source familiar with a stalled inquiry into alleged covert Syrian atomic work said.

Syrian and International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna met earlier this week to set out a date and visit plan, the source said on Wednesday. An IAEA report last week said such cooperation could be a “step forward” in its investigation.

But the agreement to visit the plant at Homs, in the country’s west near Lebanon, is unlikely to satisfy Western concerns about Syria, which is blocking IAEA requests for prompt access to a desert site seen as crucial to resolving the matter.

For over two years, Syria has refused IAEA follow-up access to the remains of a complex that was being built at Dair Alzour in the Syrian desert when Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

U.S. intelligence reports said it was a nascent North Korean-designed nuclear reactor intended to produce bomb fuel. Inspectors found traces of uranium there in June 2008 that were not in Syria’s declared nuclear inventory, heightening concerns.

Syria, an ally of Iran, whose nuclear program is also under IAEA investigation, denies ever concealing work on nuclear weapons and says the IAEA should focus on Israel instead because of its undeclared nuclear arsenal.

Late last year, after repeated entreaties to Syria’s nuclear agency went nowhere, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano appealed directly to its foreign minister for cooperation with his agency and access to Dair Alzour and other locations.

“Agreement was reached for the date and program of the visit to Homs,” the source said, adding it was a positive step. The source gave no further details, but the agency has made it clear it wants unrestricted access to Homs.

The Homs plant produces uranium concentrates, or “yellowcake”, as a by-product. The IAEA has sought to examine the material, which if further processed could be used as nuclear fuel. Syria says the plant is for making fertilizers.

At Homs, inspectors were likely to check for any links with a Damascus research reactor where they earlier found uranium traces that had not been declared to the IAEA as required.

Enriched uranium can be used to run nuclear power plants, but also provide material for bombs, if refined much further.

During a 2004 visit to the Homs plant, which the United Nations helped construct in the 1990s, agency inspectors observed hundreds of kilograms of yellowcake, according to a confidential IAEA report.

Last week a German newspaper said Western intelligence agencies suspected that Syria may have been building a secret uranium processing facility near Damascus possibly linked to the former Dair Alzour complex.

Vienna-based diplomats said this was believed to be one of several sites the agency has sought access to since 2008 and which Syria has said are military in nature and therefore beyond the scope of IAEA authority.

The IAEA has not commented on the German report.

The United States has suggested the IAEA may need to consider invoking its “special inspection” mechanism to give it authority to look anywhere necessary in Syria at short notice, if Syria does not let inspectors back to Dair Alzour.

The agency last resorted to such inspection powers in 1993 in North Korea, which still withheld access and later developed a nuclear bomb capacity in secret.

The IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors will discuss the Syria and Iran investigations at a week-long meeting beginning on Monday.

	Suspected Syrian nuclear facility reportedly bombed by Israel in 2007.

Gadhafi: U.S. faces bloody war if it enters Libya – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The embattled Libyan leader says he cannot resign as he does not hold an official position; Gadhafi’s forces are escalating a counter-offensive after government opponents seized control of eastern half of country.

By News Agencies

Muammar Gadhafi said on Wednesday that Libyans would die in thousands if the United States or other foreign powers enter Libya, and he was ready to discuss constitutional and legal changes without violence.

“Do they want us to become slaves once again like we were slaves to the Italians?” the Libyan leader said, referring to Libya’s former colonial power. “We will never accept it. We will enter a bloody war and thousands and thousands of Libyans will die if the United States enters or NATO enters.”

Gadhafi, who has lost swaths of his country to rebels, maintained in his speech that he would not resign.

“Muammar Gadhafi is not a president to resign, he does not even have a parliament to dissolve,” he said, adding that he held “no position from which to step down.”

Meanwhile, fighting between anti-government rebels and forces loyal to the Libyan leader have continued for weeks, with witnesses saying that everything from live ammunition to aerial bombing have been used to suppress the uprising.

	This video image taken from Libyan state television broadcast Wednesday March 2, 2011 shows Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi addressing supporters and journalists in Tripoli, Libya
	Photo by: AP

On Wednesday, forces loyal to Gadhafi launched a major fightback in Libya’s east on Wednesday, sparking a rebel warning that foreign military help might be needed to “put the nail in his coffin” and end his long rule.

Government troops briefly captured Marsa El Brega, an oil export terminal, before being driven back by rebels who have controlled the town 800 km east of the capital Tripoli for about a week, rebel officers said.

At one point in the flip-flopping battle, anti-Gadhafi fighters cornered the attackers in a nearby seaside university campus in fierce fighting that killed at least five.

The assault appeared to be the most significant military operation by Gadhafi since the uprising began two weeks ago and set off a confrontation that Washington says could descend into a long civil war unless the veteran strongman steps down.

Yet in Gadhafi’s speech on Wednesday, the leader dismissed accounts of protests in Libya, blaming the unrest instead on al-Qaida. He also suggested that reports of deaths in the unrest were exaggerated, suggesting only 150 people had died.

Foreign estimates suggest 2,000 may have died.

“There were no protests at all in the east,” he said in a speech.

“Al Qaeda’s cells attacked security forces and took over their weapons,” he said, adding: “How did that all begin? Small, sleeper al Qaeda cells.”

Gadhafi said that Libya would open its doors to an international investigation and said the United Nations had taken decisions based on false reports.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly unanimously suspended Libya’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council because of violence by Libyan forces against protesters.

“How can the United Nations take decisions based on 100 percent false news?” Gadhafi said in Wednesday’s speech.

Former Iran diplomat: Iran leaders would slaughter people in a revolt – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Ahmed Maleki, who was Iran’s vice consul in Milan before fleeing to Paris last month, is latest in a string of officials to defect from the Islamic state and join the opposition.

By News Agencies

An Iranian diplomat who defected last month said on Tuesday that Iran’s leaders would rather “slaughter” their own people than surrender power to any popular revolt inspired by uprisings across the Arab world.

Ahmed Maleki, who was vice consul of Iran’s consulate in Milan before fleeing to Paris with his family last month, is the latest in a string of officials to defect from the Islamic state and join a year-old opposition group called the Green Wave.

	Members of Iran’s opposition protest outside the Iranian embassy in Ankara, Turkey on Feb. 11, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

He said in an interview that Iranians had been inspired by images of popular revolt in North Africa but faced a regime far more brutal than those of Egypt, Tunisia or even Libya.

“In the course of the past 32 years the sole objective of the regime has been to retain power,” he told Reuters at a prestigious hotel in Paris, speaking through an interpreter.

“They are willing to … resort to whatever measure, including slaughter and bloodshed to the extreme in order to retain power,” Maleki said.

Two people were killed and dozens arrested on Feb. 14 when thousands of opposition supporters in Tehran and other cities took to the streets in sympathy with uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

	Mir Hossein Mousavi
	Photo by: AP Photo / Ben Curtis

Iran’s Islamist leaders, seeking to avoid a revival of mass rallies that erupted after the 2009 elections, have warned that any illegal gatherings by the opposition would be confronted.

Maleki said many other Iranian diplomats and military officers shared his critical point of view on the Tehran government but were waiting for the right time to switch sides.

He said he had fought for his country for 77 months in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

Maleki joins a former Iranian consul to Norway, an air force officer and a general who have already defected to the Green Wave. It was founded in March 2010 by exiled Iranian businessman Amir Jahanchahi, who aims to disrupt Iran’s vital energy sector to put pressure on Iranian leaders.

An international human rights group said Sunday that the two main Iranian opposition leaders and their wives are in grave danger after security forces allegedly abducted them from their homes, where they were under house arrest.

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi’s and Mahdi Karroubi’s apparent abduction indicates a serious escalation in the Iranian government’s effort to silence the opposition movement that grew out of protests over the disputed presidential election in June 2009.

Mousavi ran for president in the 2009 election against the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was declared the winner despite widespread charges of irregularities. Karroubi is an ex-speaker of the Iranian parliament who also ran on a pro-reform platform in the election.

IDF celebrates Armored Corps history: Trophy system successful – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Army top brass ecstatic as tank active protective system has first operational success. ‘Changes equation in Gaza and in northern sector against Hezbollah’s anti-tank threat,’ says senior IDF official

Yoav Zitun

IDF feels like it has crossed the Rubicon in the anti-tank missile battle with the operational success of the ‘Trophy’: Senior IDF sources expressed immense satisfaction Tuesday from the first operational activation of the active protection system (APS), designed to supplement the armor of both light and heavy armored fighting vehicles, known as Trophy, this afternoon near the southern Gaza Strip border.

An initial report into the incident shows that a Palestinian terror cell that got close to the border fence fired an RPG from close range at a tank that was carrying out a routine patrol. 

The system, which is fitted to the tank, immediately recognized the fire and fired a neutralizer which caused the rocket to explode in mid-air within safe distance of the tank. As a result, the tank incurred no damage and none of the soldiers within the tank were hurt. 

The IDF stressed that this is an unprecedented and historical event in Israel’s Armored Corps and around the world. Above all this is also “a change in the equation in the southern sector and in the northern sector against the Hezbollah‘s anti-tank threat”.

A senior IDF source noted that “the system has proven itself above and beyond expectations and it is also effective against missiles that are larger than RPGs.”

‘System has proven itself above and beyond’ (Photo: AFP)

“Just two months after it came into operational use the Trophy prevented injury among soldiers with unimagined success,” the senior source added. “Investment in technological development that went on for years presented unprecedented results. This doesn’t mean that tanks won’t be hit in the future, but without a doubt this is a new method of dealing with the anti-tank threat.”

The Armored Corps technological innovation first made headlines two months ago when the IDF prepared a final test for the Trophy system, which was supposed to include a fully-manned tank. Following appeals from bereaved parents who lost their children in the Ze’elim disaster, it was eventually decided to avoid using live fire on the tank.

The test, which was held under supervision and using all available safety measures was a success – and the system was immediately put into the mark-4 Merkava tanks.

Iran says fuel not removed at Bushehr nuclear site | Reuters.

(Reuters) – Iran has not yet removed fuel from its Bushehr nuclear power plant, its foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday, signaling a further possible delay to the Russian-built plant’s operation date.

Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog had said on February 26 that Tehran was having to remove fuel from the reactor of its only nuclear power station, the latest glitch to hit Bushehr in Iran’s decades-long attempts to bring it on line.

But foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Reuters: “The nuclear fuel has not been unloaded at the Bushehr power plant and this plant is continuing its routine activities.”

He added: “We hope that Russia can meet the schedule … and have the Bushehr plant join Iran’s national grid on time.”

It was not clear when the removal of the fuel might begin.

Amid confusion over the status of the plant, Iranian officials have said the fuel was being unloaded for tests on the advice of Russian engineers, and that it was being removed for safety reasons.

Russia’s state-run nuclear agency said on Monday that the problem was caused by damage to internal elements in a cooling pump.

A senior Iranian official said in February that suggestions should be investigated that the Stuxnet computer worm, believed to have been an attempt by Iran’s enemies to sabotage the nuclear program, had caused harm to the 1,000 megawatt Bushehr reactor.

Russia’s NATO ambassador has said the computer virus could have triggered a nuclear disaster on the scale of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.

Bushehr was started by Germany‘s Siemens in the 1970s, before Iran’s Islamic revolution, and has been dogged by delays. Fuel was loaded into the reactor four months ago but a January deadline for it to start producing electricity was missed.

Further delays could be an embarrassment not only to Iranian politicians who have made Bushehr the showpiece of what they insist are Tehran’s peaceful nuclear ambitions, but also for Russia, which would like to export more of its nuclear know-how to emerging economies.

Many analysts believe Stuxnet was a cyber attack by the United States and Israel aimed at disabling Iran’s nuclear equipment and slowing down a program they suspect is aimed at making nuclear weapons, something Tehran denies.

Iranian officials have confirmed Stuxnet hit staff computers at Bushehr but said it did not affect major systems.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 1, 2011, 8:51 PM (GMT+02:00)

Honor guard on Iranian waship for Iranian, Syrian Navy chiefs at Latakia

Just two days after two Iranian warships reached the Syrian port of Latakia via the Suez Canal, Friday, Feb. 25, an Iranian-Syrian naval cooperation accord was signed providing for Iran to build its first Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port, debkafile‘s military and Iranian sources reveal.
The base will include a large Iranian Revolutionary Guards weapons depot stocked with hardware chosen by the IRGC subject to prior notification to Damascus. Latakia harbor will be deepened, widened and provided with new “coastal installations” to accommodate the large warships and submarines destined to use these facilities.

Iran has much to celebrate, debkafile‘s military sources report. It has acquired its first military foothold on a Mediterranean shore and its first permanent military presence on Syrian soil. Tehran will be setting in place the logistical infrastructure for accommodating incoming Iranian troops to fight in a potential Middle East war.

According to our sources, the “cadets” the Kharg cruiser, one of the two Iranian warships allowed to transit the Suez Canal, was said to be carrying were in fact the first construction crews for building the new port facilities.
Two more events were carefully synchronized to take place in the same week.

On Feb. 24, as the Iranian warships headed from the Suez Canal to Syria, Hamas fired long-range made-in-Iran Grade missiles from the Gaza Strip into Israel, one hitting the main Negev city of Beersheba for the first time since Israel’s Gaza campaign two years ago. Tehran was using its Palestinian surrogate to flaunt its success in getting its first warships through the Suez Canal in the face of Israeli protests. The Iranians were also parading their offensive agenda in deploying warships on the Mediterranean just 287 kilometers north of Israel’s northernmost coastal town of Nahariya.
The second occurrence was a contract announced by Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov for the sale of advanced Russian shore-to-sea cruise missiles to Syria. The Yakhont missile system has a range of 300 kilometers and skims the waves low enough to be undetected by radar. debkafile‘s military sources take this sale as representing Moscow’s nod in favor of the new Iranian base at Latakia, 72 kilometers from the permanent naval base Russia is building at the Syrian port of Tartous.

The Russians are willing to contribute towards the Iranian port’s defenses and looking forward to cooperation between the Russian, Iranian and Syrian fleets in the eastern Mediterranean opposite the US Sixth Fleet’s regular beat.

This unfolding proximity presents the United States with a serious strategic challenge and Israel with a new peril, which was nonetheless dismissed out of hand by Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak. In a radio interview Monday, Feb. 28, he brushed aside the Iranian warships’ passage through the Suez as “an outing for cadets” which did not require an Israeli response. He added, “For now, there is no operational threat to Israel.”
According to Barak, the Suez Canal is open to all of the world’s warships and the two Iranian vessels’ transit could not have been prevented. He omitted to explain how Egypt did prevent it for 30 years and why it was permitted now. The defense minister went on to speak of “fresh signs that President Bashar Assad is willing to resume peace talks with Israel.”

Both Barak’s assessments were knocked down by Damascus on the same day.

Syrian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammad Habib soon put him right on the “cadets’ outing.” At a ceremony in honor of the Iranian Navy Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Habib said: “Iranian warships’ presence in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time after 32 years is a great move that is going to cripple Israel.”

Israel: Pressure must be mounted on Iran.

A new IAEA report that Iran may be seeking to develop a nuclear-armed missile only underscores the importance of upgrading pressure on Iran and convincing Tehran that a military option is a real possibility if it doesn’t stop pursuing nuclear arms, Israeli government sources said on Monday.

The officials were responding to a confidential document leaked over the weekend that signaled the UN body’s growing frustration at Iran’s lack of cooperation.

The report made clear Tehran’s determination to press ahead with sensitive atomic activity despite four rounds of UN sanctions since 2006, saying the country had informed the IAEA it would soon start operating a second uranium enrichment plant.

Israeli officials said that while stepped-up military and economic pressure was necessary, the only thing likely to stop the Iranians was their belief that the West had a credible military option, and would be willing to use it.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has conveyed this message in recent days during private meetings, including one on Sunday with a congressional delegation. If there is a credible military option, he said, the chances that it will have to be used are, paradoxically, reduced.

The IAEA report comes at a time of concern in Jerusalem that the rapid and dramatic developments in the region are diverting the world’s attention from the Iranian nuclear program, with all eyes focused on Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but not Iran.

The report may provide the United States and allies with additional arguments for further tightening sanctions on the Islamic Republic, after talks in December and January failed to make any progress toward resolving the dispute.

However, Israeli officials said momentum for a fifth round of sanctions seemed unlikely at the present time, since Russia, China and even some European countries were believed to be opposed. The officials were satisfied, however, that the IAEA report revealed to the world the degree to which Iran was not cooperating.

“Iran is not engaging with the agency in substance on issues concerning the allegation that Iran is developing a nuclear payload for its missile program,” the report read.

For several years, the IAEA has been investigating Western intelligence reports indicating Iran has coordinated efforts to process uranium, test explosives at high altitude and revamp a ballistic missile cone in a manner suitable for a nuclear warhead.

An official with knowledge of the IAEA’s investigation said the new information, if it turned out to be correct, concerned both Iran’s past and more recent activities.

The report said that based on an analysis of “additional information which has come to its attention since August 2008, including new information recently received, there are further concerns which the agency… needs to clarify with Iran.”

In a surprise development, the report said the Islamic Republic had said it “would have to unload fuel assemblies” from the core of the Russian-built Bushehr reactor, which Iranian officials had previously said would soon start generating electricity.

Iran is believed to have told the IAEA that a broken pump was forcing it to remove fuel from its first nuclear reactor, in a fresh setback for the $1 billion project, experts familiar with the issue said on Monday.

They said it was a potentially serious problem that could cause months of further delays for the Bushehr plant, which has yet to start injecting power into Iran’s national grid.

Iran has said Bushehr, first in a planned network of nuclear power plants, would start producing electricity early this year.

One independent expert said the problem apparently concerned an old back-up pump in the reactor.

“I think what happened is that the pump failed but it didn’t just fail, it broke up, so that … there are pieces of metal that are now circulated throughout the primary cooling system,” the expert told Reuters.

If not fixed, it could ultimately have led to a small radioactive leakage into the reactor’s cooling water.

“They are probably very happy it happened before it went critical (the plant starting to operate) because now they can inspect the fuel a lot more easily,” the expert added.

Fuel was loaded into the reactor four months ago but a January deadline for it to start producing electricity was missed.

Further woes could be an embarrassment not only to Iranian politicians who have made Bushehr the show-piece of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but also for Russia which would like to export more of its nuclear know-how to emerging economies.