WarSclerotic

Russia Likely Unleashed Stuxnet, Says USA’s Cyber-Defense Expert – SPAMfighter.

USA and Israel largely presume that Russia is behind the Stuxnet PC-virus, which attacked the nuclear plants in Iran, published ‘The Diplomat’ dated December 10, 2011.

Previously, it was widely regarded that the Stuxnet was a cyber-weapon that USA and Israel jointly created for causing destruction at the nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran. However, as the perpetrators’ identity has now become known, it isn’t unclear anymore.

Essentially, cyber-defense analyst Dr. Panayotis A. Yannakogeorgos attached to the Air Force Research Institute of USA says that Russia isn’t in favor of a nuclear capability built indigenously in Iran. For, profits of Russian firms will prove beneficial only when Iran maintains engineers and scientists from there in its own country for supervising its nuclear progress, he observes. Softpedia published this dated December 12, 2011.

Moreover, it’s reported that the purpose of the cyber-weapon was to attack one particular SCADA PLC (programmable logic controls) edition of Siemens running certain configuration along with many cascading centrifuges within Iran.

Incidentally, a few assessors raise the truth regarding vulnerability analyses getting conducted on Siemens PLC application at Idaho National Labs while according to others, the cyber-weapon nearly resembles the well-designed as well as ethically planned war-equipment in the cyber-warfare description of Richard Clark that minimizes collateral destruction because of numerous lawyers inspecting its impact.

Meanwhile Dr. Panayotis says that Russia, by utilizing its distinct observations, subsequently plays the diplomacy-and-delay strategy of the Byzantine kind. While taking more time to implement a program citing reasons of technicality cannot be allowed for indefinitely, the country’s active role within the nuclear scheme has a connection with Russo-American negotiations, he explains.

Furthermore, Dr. Panayotis believes that it’s possible for the Russians to install certain digital fingerprints for ensuring that the malware’s analyst would conclude that Israel and USA were responsible for it. But, as nobody is formally blaming the two countries, Russia can hold on; however, they’ll simultaneously know precisely everything that happens to Iran’s nuclear scheme.

Eventually, according to Dr. Panayotis, it’s immaterial as to who’s controlling the Stuxnet. Still, analysis of the worm is ongoing since there isn’t any strong evidence regarding its origin.

Israel hopes death of North Korea leader will damage ties with Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The death of Kim Jong Il raises the possibility that the alliance between North Korea and Iran will flag, just as their third partner, Syria, is also weakening.

By Amir Oren

2011 has been a bad year for dictators, whether those, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, whose stay in power was convenient for Israel or those, like Syria’s Bashar Assad, who are Israel’s enemies. Now that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has died, the transfer of power to the third generation – Kim Jong Un, a grandchild of the country’s inflexible founder, Kim Il Sung – does not guarantee a thaw in relations between the two Koreas, or any reduction in the hostility between Pyongyang and Jerusalem. But the change does raise the possibility that the alliance between North Korea and Iran will flag, just as their third partner, Syria, is also weakening.

	An outpouring of emotion in Pyongyang after the death of Kim Jong Il was announced, December 19, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

Last week, Israeli journalists were invited for talks with South Korea’s new ambassador to Israel, Kim Ilsoo. He was asked about the succession struggle in North Korea and the state of the eternal aspirations, on both sides of the 38th parallel, for unification. The ambassador smiled. Two decades ago, he said, when Germany reunified and the Warsaw Pact fell apart, knowledgeable observers competed with each other over who could offer the most accurate prediction of how soon the Koreas would be imitating Germany. The optimistic ones predicted that it would take a year – or maybe three, but no more than five – and the pessimistic ones said it would take a decade. More than two decades later, if there has been any change since the days of Kim Il Sung, it has been a change for the worse.

The ambassador’s briefing was meant to explain South Korea’s preparations for the 47-nation 2012 Nuclear Security Summit scheduled to take place in Seoul in late March. The prestige associated with hosting an international summit like this, which will discuss how to prevent nuclear terrorism and the smuggling of nuclear material and how to increase safety and security at nuclear facilities, is important to South Korea.

The conference is a kind of continuation of one held in Washington last year, and the list of participants is virtually the same. Seoul is hoping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend, though he skipped the Washington summit and sent Dan Meridor, the intelligence and atomic energy minister, in his place.

Just nine months after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, setting off one of the world’s worst radiation crises, nuclear safety is nothing to sneeze at – and neither is securing nuclear facilities or preventing terrorism and smuggling. But the Seoul conference (to which North Korea was invited, but only under terms it has said it considers unacceptable ) is not slated to deal with perhaps the most important nuclear issues: the nuclear nonproliferation regime and what to do about recalcitrant regional powers Iran and North Korea. These issues are being dealt with elsewhere.

The fact that Israel and South Korea are on the same side of the nuclear line is almost a given. One of the first signs that David Ben-Gurion had chosen to join the U.S.-led West was his plan (which was voted down by most of his government ) to send a Givati battalion to help the U.S. Army fight the Korean War. North Korea, a devoted disciple of its patrons, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong (before the Sino-Soviet split ), came out on the side of the Arab states and sent a fighter squadron to Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. And then there’s the covert nuclear facility that North Korea helped Syria build, which was destroyed in an Israel Air Force attack in September 2007.

Washington maintains an interest in both Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. It maintains a nuclear umbrella over South Korea, and if that umbrella were to be removed, Japanese and South Korean nuclear weapons would follow shortly. In addition, Washington won’t be able to hold back in case of a North Korean attack, since its citizens are also at risk: There are tens of thousands U.S. soldiers and their families stationed in Japan and South Korea.

The United States also has a military presence in the Persian Gulf. After its withdrawal from Iraq, it will still have land and air bases in Kuwait as well as a naval base in Bahrain.

All told, a new, less unenlightened regime in North Korea, one that is more attentive to its citizens, more open to the world and more conciliatory toward its wealthier and more developed sister state to its south, would bolster Israel’s security.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(This appears to be the real thing, finally.  Panetta has done a 180 in two weeks.  – JW)
DEBKAfile Special Report December 20, 2011, 11:43 AM (GMT+02:00)

Leon Panetta signals new US Iran policy

“Despite the efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, they have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less,” said US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in a CBS interview Tuesday, Dec. 20, marking a radical change in US administration policy, he added: “That’s a red line for us and that’s a red line, obviously for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.”

debkafile notes that as recently as Dec. 2, the US defense secretary in a lecture at the Brookings Institute in Washington warned Israel that a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would hold back its bomb program by no more than a year or two and seriously damage the world economy. He said then that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an existential concern for Israel, but the red line for America would be the disruption of Persian Gulf oil trade.
In the CBS interview he gave on his way back from trips to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he drew no distinctions between America and Israel on the Iran issue.
Asked by anchor Scott Pelley if Iran could have a nuclear weapon in 2012, he answered: “It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less.” That would depend on their having “a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel.”

Pelley then asked: If the Israelis decide to launch a military strike to prevent that weapon from being built, what sort of complications does that raise for you?

Panetta: We share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us and that’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.

Asked if “it” included military steps, the US defense secretary replied: There are no options off the table. A nuclear weapon in Iran is unacceptable.
He added that he has no indication yet that the Iranians have made the decision to go ahead.
Until now, debkafile‘s Washington sources note, the Obama administration stood firmly by sanctions, which could be made tougher, as the only course of action for putting the brakes on Iran’s weapons program.

However, Panetta made no mention of sanctions in this interview – not even of the ultimate penalties of an embargo on its oil trade and blacklisting its central bank.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources link this radical change of posture, and its implied open door to joint US-Israeli military action, to the discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue President Barack Obama had with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Washington last Friday, Dec. 16. It took place at about the same time as Leon Panetta was meeting with Turkish leaders in Ankara. (The night before, the Turkish military council met urgently to review preparations for war hostilities on two fronts: Syria and Iran.)
Both meetings, say debkafile‘s Washington sources, addressed the reality of Iran having a nuclear bomb within months.

The administration’s change of course finds expression in six areas:
1.  Panetta has tossed aside the various intelligence estimates of a three-to-four year timeline for Iran to have a nuclear bomb. He now accepts that Tehran may be only months away from this target.
2.  His reference to “a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel” reflects the growing conviction among Western and Middle East intelligence experts that Iran has fast-tracked its high-grade uranium enrichment in underground facilities.
3.  He is no longer warning Israel against attacking Iran and appears to be taking the opposite tack: We must stop Iran crossing the shared red line to an “unacceptable” nuclear weapon. “If we have to do it we will deal with it,” he said, referring to the military option.

4. It is the last moment for the US to avert the Middle East’s plunge into a nuclear race.

Dec. 5, the former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal said that after failing to persuade Israel and Iran to give up their nuclear weapons, Riyadh had no option but to develop its own; and Turkish leader have been saying to the  Obama administration that if Iran has a nuclear weapon, so too will Turkey.
The administration is now facing the bleak realization that a disastrous nuclear race in this volatile region can be deflected only by military action to cut down and destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

5.  Iran’s capture of the American RQ-170 stealth drone on Dec. 4 brought home to US military and intelligence planners that a military showdown between the US and Iran is no longer avoidable and if America does not take the initiative, Iran will keep on driving it into corners until there is no other option but to hit back.
6.  The sudden death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong II and the period of uncertainty facing his successor Kim Jong-un could potentially lead to Pyongyang – or factions fighting for power – stepping up its involvement in Iran’s nuclear weapon and missile development programs.

Panetta: Iran will not be allowed nukes – CBS News.

(CBS News)

The U.S. Secretary of Defense said Monday night that Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. In an interview, Leon Panetta, said despite the efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less.

Secretary Panetta spoke with us at the end of an overseas trip during which he reviewed strategy in Afghanistan and formally ended the war in Iraq.

CBS News anchor Scott Pelley caught up with Secretary Panetta on his tour last week of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. On the way home, he boarded the jet nicknamed “The Doomsday Plane.” This is the command post where he and the president would direct a nuclear war. In an interview for “60 Minutes,” we sat down in the compartment where he would execute the commander-in-chief’s orders. Panetta told CBS News that Iran needs only one year to build a nuclear weapon.

Pelley: So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?

Panetta: It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less. But one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel.

Pelley: So that they can develop a weapon even more quickly…

Panetta: On a faster track….

Pelley: Than we believe….

Panetta: That’s correct.

Pelley: If the Israelis decide to launch a military strike to prevent that weapon from being built, what sort of complications does that raise for you?

Panetta: Well, we share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us and that’s a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it.

Pelley: You just said if we have to do it we will come and do it. What is it?

Panetta: If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.

Pelley: Including military steps?

Panetta: There are no options off the table

Pelley: A nuclear weapon in Iran is…

Panetta: Unacceptable.

Panetta also told CBS News that while Iran needs a year or less to assemble a weapon, he has no indication yet that the Iranians have made the decision to go ahead.