WarSclerotic

Iran says it has detected second cyber attack | Reuters.

(Reuters) – Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus in a “cyber war” waged by its enemies, its commander of civil defense said on Monday.

Gholamreza Jalali told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the new virus, called “Stars,” was being investigated by experts.

“Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations,” Jalali was quoted as saying. He did not specify the target of Stars or its intended impact.

“The particular characteristics of the Stars virus have been discovered,” Jalali said. “The virus is congruous and harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government organisations.”

Jalali warned that the Stuxnet worm, discovered in computers at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor last year, still posed a potential risk. Some experts described it as the world’s first “guided cyber missile,” aimed at Iran’s atomic program.

Iranian officials said they had neutralized Stuxnet before it did the intended damage to its nuclear facilities. They blamed Israel and the United States — which believe Iran is seeking nuclear weapons — for the virus.

Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

STUXNET RISK

The existence of Stuxnet became public knowledge around the time that Iran began loading fuel into Bushehr, its first nuclear reactor, last August. Iran said in September that staff computers at Bushehr had been hit but that the plant itself was unharmed.

Bushehr is still not operational, having missed several start-up deadlines. This has prompted speculation that Stuxnet damaged the plant, something Iran denies.

Officials have said the virus could have posed a major risk had it not been discovered and dealt with before any major damage was done.

Some defense analysts say the main target was more likely to be Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Enrichment creates fuel for nuclear power plants or, if pursued to a much higher degree, can provide material for an atomic bomb.

Jalali said Stuxnet might still pose a risk. “We should know that fighting the Stuxnet virus does not mean the threat has been completely tackled, because viruses have a certain life span and they might continue their activities in another way.”

He urged the government to take action against the enemies he said were waging cyber war on Iran.

“Perhaps the Foreign Ministry had overlooked the options to legally pursue the case, and it seems our diplomatic apparatus should pay more attention to follow up the cyber wars staged against Iran,” Jalali said.

(Additional reporting by Hossein Jaseb; Writing by Ramin Mostafavi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Mark Trevelyan)

‘Bahrain says Hezbollah seeking to overthrow regime’.

  Bahrain accused the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah of trying to topple the Gulf country’s ruling Sunni family, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

In a confidential report sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Bahrain also said that Hezbollah’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, worked directly with Bahrain’s majority Shi’ite opposition on tactics to challenge the regime. Both Hezbollah and the Bahraini opposition have denied cooperation in efforts to overthrow the ruling Khalifa family.

According to the Wall Street Journal, US intelligence officials claimed to have tracked communications between Hezbollah, Iran, and the Bahraini opposition groups since protests erupted in February. The issue highlights growing tensions between the Sunni-Arab Gulf countries and the non-Arab Shi’ite Iran who see the Iranian influence in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and increasingly in Egypt as a threat.

In March Bahrain had lodged a formal complaint to the Lebanese government over a  Hezbollah offer of support to the protesters. Hezbollah had denied it had any cadres or Lebanese individuals operating in the gulf country, and Hezbollah does not have any cells in Bahrain, either composed of Bahrainis or any other nationalities”.

Nasrallah admitted to giving political and moral support to protesters, but said “that our Bahraini brothers did not ask us for any military or security training on any day and we have not given any training of that kind.”

Protests in Bahrain were quelled when Saudi Arabia along with other Gulf states sent troops to the island country in order to support the ruling regime.

U.S. plans sanctions on Syria in wake of brutal crackdowns – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

(I’m sure this makes the brutal butcher Assad quake in his boots… – JW)

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order to freeze the assets of senior Syrian officials and bar them from engaging in any business dealings with the United States, says a Wall Street Journal report.

By Haaretz Service

The Obama administration may level sanctions against Syria as punishment for President Bashar Assad’s government’s violent crackdown on protesters, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The U.S. is currently drafting an executive order that will empower President Obama to freeze the assets of senior Syrian officials and bar them from engaging in any business dealings with the United States, the report said, citing officials briefed on the matter.

	Protestors gather during a demonstration in the Syrian port city of Banias April 22, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

According to the report, freezing Syrian officials’ assets in the U.S. will have little impact on Assad’s inner circle. However, the hope is that European countries, where Syrian officials have more substantial holdings, will follow suit, thereby having a more crippling economic effect.

Officials reportedly hope that the legal order will be completed by the U.S. Treasury Department in the coming weeks, an indication of a hardening of the United State’s stance toward Syria.

This is a marked divergence from the Obama administration’s initial policy of rapprochement, with the United States sending an ambassador to the Syrian capital of Damascus for the first time in five years this past January.

The U.S. froze ties with the Middle Eastern country in the wake of the assassination of Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, which many suspect was Syria’s doing.

Relations with the U.S. deteriorated increasingly with the escalation of clashes between Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanese border in 2006. The U.S. publically criticized Syria’s political and logistical support of the militant organization.

Earlier this month, WikiLeaks documents published by the Washington Post revealed that the State Department has been secretly financing opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The leaked documents show that the U.S. has provided at least $6 million to Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, and other opposition groups inside Syria since 2006, the newspaper said.

The Post said it was not clear from the WikiLeaks documents whether the U.S. was still financing Assad’s opponents, though they showed funding had been set aside through September 2010.

The State Department refused to comment on the authenticity of the cables, the Post said.

Syrian activists have been staging protests against Assad’s authoritarian regime for more than a month. Hundreds of people have been killed in clashed between security forces and protesters.

President Assad lifted the decades-long emergency laws last week, one of the protesters’ key demands, and has attempted to appease dissidents with promises of reforms and a government reshuffle, however protests and crackdowns persist.

Syrian authorities arrested dozens of anti-government activists Sunday, and killed over 100 protesters on Friday in the bloodiest crackdown since uprisings began last month.

Tanks deploy in Deraa; bodies seen lying in the streets.

  Eight tanks and two armored vehicles deployed in the old quarter of the besieged Syrian city of Deraa and several bodies were seen lying in a main street near the Omari mosque, a witness said on Monday.

The witness in Deraa said snipers on government buildings and security forces in army fatigues had been shooting at random at houses since tanks moved in just after dawn prayers.

“People are taking cover in homes. I could see two bodies near the mosque and no one was able to go out and drag them away,” the witness said.

Syrian security forces have shot dead at least 13 civilians since they swept into the coastal town of Jabla on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

The security forces and gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad deployed in the old Sunni quarter of Jabla on Sunday after a pro-democracy protest in the town the previous night, rights campaigners in contact with Jabla said.

Overnight, Syrian troops in armored vehicles poured into the restive town of Deraa  and opened fire, residents said on Monday, the latest bloodshed in crackdown on protests that has escalated sharply in recent days.

Syrian writers issued a declaration denouncing the crackdown, a sign of outrage surging through the intellectual elite over the violence.

Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 350 civilians since unrest began last month. A third of the victims were killed in the past three days as the scale and breadth of a popular revolt against President Bashar Assad grew.

Residents in Deraa, where the protest movement against Asaad first erupted last month, said hundreds of troops had arrived.

“They were firing. Witnesses have told me that there have been five deaths so far and houses have become hospitals,” a Deraa resident named Mohsen told Al Jazeera by telephone.

Foreign journalists have mostly been expelled from the country, making it impossible to verify the situation on the ground. Grisly footage posted on the Internet by demonstrators in recent days appears to show troops firing on unarmed crowds.

In some of the latest violence, activists said government troops and gunmen loyal to Assad shot dead at least nine civilians on Sunday in the Mediterranean coastal town of Jabla, where troops deployed following a protest the previous night.

Rights campaigners said they feared Assad’s forces were preparing for an attack on the town of Nawa after reports of bulldozers and military vehicles heading there. Thousands of people in the town called for the overthrow of Assad on Sunday at a funeral for protesters killed by security forces.

Electricity and communications were cut off in parts of Nawa by the evening and residents, some armed, erected barriers in the streets in preparation to defend against attack.

“Long live Syria. Down with Bashar!” mourners chanted during the funeral in Nawa, 25 km (15 miles) north of Deraa.

“Leave, leave! The people want the overthrow of the regime.”

In Banias, south of Jabla, protest leaders said they would cut the main coastal highway unless the siege on Jabla was lifted. Jabla is home to large numbers of members of Assad’s Alawite Shi’ite minority who had generally stayed away from protests in the past.

Breaking the barrier of fear

Monday’s declaration was signed by 102 writers and journalists, in Syria and in exile, representing all the country’s main sects, a sign that shock at the violence is crossing Syria’s lines of sectarian division.

It called on Syrian intellectuals “who have not broken the barrier of fear to make a clear stand.

“We condemn the violent, oppressive practices of the Syrian regime against the protesters and mourn the martyrs of the uprising.”

Signatories included Alawite figures such as former political prisoner Loay Hussein; female writers Samar Yazbek and Hala Mohammad; Souad Jarrous, correspondent for al-Sharq al-Awsat pan-Arab daily; writer and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh and filmmaker Mohammad Ali al-Attassi.

Mansour al-Ali, a prominent Alawite figure from the city of Homs, was arrested in his home city after he spoke out against the shooting of protesters, an activist in Homs said.

At least 100 people were killed across Syria on Friday, the highest toll of the unrest, when security forces shot protesters demanding political freedoms and an end to corruption in their country, ruled for 41 years by the Assad dynasty.

Another 12 people were killed on Saturday at mass funerals for slain protesters. Rights campaigners said secret police raided homes near Damascus and in the central city of Homs on Sunday, arresting activists.