WarSclerotic

US National Security Adviser John Bolton landed in Israel on Saturday ahead of an unprecedented trilateral meeting in Jerusalem of top security officials from the United States, Israel and Russia.

Bolton will discuss regional issues with his counterparts, Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolai Patrushev. Iran’s efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria and the escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington are expected to top the agenda.

Moscow has said it will look out for Iran’s interests at the meeting.

“Iran is in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate government and is actively involved in fighting terrorism. Therefore, of course, we will have to take into account the interests of Iran,” Patrushev said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, flanked by Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, meets with the BRICS countries’ senior officials in charge of security matters, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on May 26, 2015. (Sergei Karpukhin/Pool Photo via AP)

Bolton landed Saturday afternoon and is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning, the Ynet news site reported.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu hailed the “historic and unprecedented” summit as an important step toward guaranteeing “stability in the Middle East during turbulent times.”

“What is important about this trilateral meeting of the two superpowers in the State of Israel is that it greatly attests to the current international standing of Israel among the nations,” he added.

Earlier this month, a senior US official said Washington would use the meeting to tell Moscow that Iran should withdraw from Syria, and ask for Russia’s suggestions on how to counter Tehran’s influence in the region. The unnamed official said that the US supported Israel’s actions against Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

“We would hope to make the point in conjunction with the Israelis that we don’t see any positive role for the Iranians — and that would extend beyond Syria, to Lebanon, to Iraq, to Yemen — other places where they’re active,” the official said, according to a Reuters report.

National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat. (Amos Ben Gerschom/GPO)

He added that Washington was sure that the summit, with Israel hosting both Russia and the US in Jerusalem, would irk Iranian leadership, and said that the fact that Russia was participating was a positive sign.

“The fact that the Russians see value in these conversations, that they’re willing to do it publicly, I think is in and of itself quite significant,” the official said.

According to a report by the Kan public broadcaster, Israel and the US will offer Russia incentives for an effort to curb Iranian influence in Syria, which could include legitimizing the continued leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It was unclear what Washington and Jerusalem would offer Moscow in return.

Moscow is a close ally of Tehran and Damascus, while Jerusalem and Washington are the Islamic Republic’s archenemies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran has increased its offensive cyberattacks against the US government and critical infrastructure as tensions have grown between the two nations, cybersecurity firms say.

In recent weeks, hackers believed to be working for the Iranian government have targeted US government agencies, as well as sectors of the economy, including oil and gas, sending waves of spear-phishing emails, according to representatives of cybersecurity companies CrowdStrike and FireEye, which regularly track such activity.

It was not known if any of the hackers managed to gain access to the targeted networks with the emails, which typically mimic legitimate emails but contain malicious software.

The cyber offensive is the latest chapter in the US and Iran’s ongoing cyber operations targeting the other, with this recent sharp increase in attacks occurring after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Iranian petrochemical sector this month.

Tensions have escalated since the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year and began a policy of “maximum pressure.” Iran has since been hit by multiple rounds of sanctions. Tensions spiked this past week after Iran shot down an unmanned US drone — an incident that nearly led to a US military strike against Iran on Thursday evening.

In this February 13, 2018, photo released by the US Air Force, an RQ-4 Global Hawk is seen on the tarmac of Al-Dhafra Air Base near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. (Airman 1st Class D. Blake Browning/US Air Force via AP)

“Both sides are desperate to know what the other side is thinking,” said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye. “You can absolutely expect the regime to be leveraging every tool they have available to reduce the uncertainty about what’s going to happen next, about what the US’s next move will be.”

CrowdStrike shared images of the spear-phishing emails with The AP.

One such email that was confirmed by FireEye appeared to come from the Executive Office of the President and seemed to be trying to recruit people for an economic adviser position. Another email was more generic and appeared to include details on updating Microsoft Outlook’s global address book.

The Iranian actor involved in the cyberattack, dubbed “Refined Kitten” by CrowdStrike, has for years targeted the US energy and defense sectors, as well as allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike.

The National Security Agency would not address discuss Iranian cyber actions specifically but said in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday that “there have been serious issues with malicious Iranian cyber actions in the past.”

“In these times of heightened tensions, it is appropriate for everyone to be alert to signs of Iranian aggression in cyberspace and ensure appropriate defenses are in place,” the NSA said.

Iran has long targeted the US oil and gas sectors and other critical infrastructure, but those efforts dropped significantly after the nuclear agreement was signed. After President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in May 2018, cyber experts said they have seen an increase in Iranian hacking efforts.

Illustrative: A control room simulator used for training is seen at the Callaway Energy Center, Missouri’s only nuclear power plant, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017, in Reform, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

“This is not a remote war (anymore),” said Sergio Caltagirone, vice president of threat intelligence at Dragos, Inc. “This is one where Iranians could quote unquote bring the war home to the United States.”

Caltagirone said as nations increase their abilities to engage offensively in cyberspace, the ability of the United States to pick a fight internationally and have that fight stay out of the United States physically is increasingly reduced.

The US has had a contentious cyber history with Iran.

In 2010, the so-called Stuxnet virus disrupted the operation of thousands of centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran. Iran accused the US and Israel of trying to undermine its nuclear program through covert operations.

Iran has also shown a willingness to conduct destructive campaigns. Iranian hackers in 2012 launched an attack against state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, releasing a virus that erased data on 30,000 computers and left an image of a burning American flag on screens.

Illustrative photo from 2004 of an industrial plant that strips natural gas from freshly pumped crude oil at Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oil field at Shaybah in Saudi Arabia’s Rub al-Khali desert. (AP Photo/Bruce Stanley, File)

In 2016, the US indicted Iranian hackers for a series of punishing cyberattacks on US banks and a small dam outside of New York City.

US Cyber Command refused to comment on the latest Iranian activity. “As a matter of policy and for operational security, we do not discuss cyberspace operations, intelligence or planning,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said in a statement. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite the apparent cyber campaign, experts say the Iranians would not necessarily immediately exploit any access they gain into computer systems and may seek to maintain future capabilities should their relationship with the US further deteriorate.

“It’s important to remember that cyber is not some magic offensive nuke you can fly over and drop one day,” said Oren Falkowitz, a former National Security Agency analyst. It takes years of planning, he said, but as tensions increase, “cyber impact is going to be one of the tools they use and one of the hardest things to defend against.”

Around 30 officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their guests gathered Thursday night in a villa in Tehran to celebrate the downing of a US drone.

“A special blessing for the commander who ordered the attack on the American drone and for the fighters who carried it out,” said a preacher, according to a guest who spoke with The New York Times.

According to the report, Revolutionary Guard officials were somewhat surprised they had succeeded in shooting the drone out of the sky and had in fact only attempted the operation to see if it was possible, according to that guest, and four others, including two senior current members of the Guard, and two former members.

According to the sources, the elite military unit, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been maddened by recent statements from the Trump administration calling into question the abilities of the IRGC.

The officials felt further joy when they heard that US President Donald Trump had called off retaliatory strikes 10 minutes before they were to be carried out after being told some 150 people could die.

Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard march during an annual military parade at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, outside Tehran, Iran, on September 22, 2014. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The aborted attack was the closest the US has come to a direct military strike on Iran in the year since the administration pulled out of the 2015 international agreement intended to curb the Iranian nuclear program and launched a campaign of increasing economic pressure against the Islamic Republic.

“What happened in the past 48 hours was extremely important in showing Iran’s strength and forcing the US to recalculate,” political analyst and former member of the Guards’ political bureau Naser Imani told the Times. “No matter how you look at it, Iran won.”

A top commander in the Guard Corps said Friday Iran could have downed an aircraft carrying American personnel on Thursday, but chose not to do so.

The United States reportedly launched cyber attacks against Iranian missile control systems and a spy network in response to the downing of the drone. The attack crippled computers used to control rocket and missile launches, according to the Washington Post, which cited people familiar with the matter.

US President Donald Trump listens to a question during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House, June 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The downing of the drone — which Washington insists was over international waters but Tehran says was within its airspace — has seen tensions between the two countries spike further after a series of attacks on tankers the US and its staunch ally, Saudi Arabia, as well as reportedly Israel, have blamed on Iran.

Tehran denies having been behind those attacks but has frequently threatened in the past to block the vital sea lanes into and out of the Gulf.

A top Iranian military official on Saturday pledged to “set fire to the interests of America and its allies” if the US attacks.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have grown sharply since May last year when Trump unilaterally abandoned a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between major powers and Iran, and reimposed sweeping sanctions. The international agreement intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from earlier sanctions.

The US has since bolstered its military presence in the Middle East and blacklisted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The planes were ready — their deadly cargo poised for delivery within a half-hour.

US President Donald Trump had been given a series of options Thursday night on how to respond to Iran’s downing of an unmanned American surveillance drone. Senior military advisers zeroed in on a plan to launch strikes on a trio of sites within Iran, and it was up to Trump to give the final go-ahead.

If the planes took off, Trump later recounted to NBC, they would soon be at “a point where you wouldn’t turn back or couldn’t turn back.”

Trump’s decision point came at the culmination of a tense 24 hours inside the West Wing after the drone went down.

How would he make his decision? “My gut,” he told legislators.

Head of Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh looks at debris from what the division says iss the US drone which was shot down on Thursday, in Tehran, Iran, June 21, 2019 (Meghdad Madadi/Tasnim News Agency/via AP)

When the military officers came looking for the president’s final go-ahead, Trump said he had one last question.

“‘I want to know something before you go,’” Trump recounted. “‘How many people will be killed?’”

This account is based on information from more than a dozen legislators, congressional aides, administration officials and others, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Hours earlier, a model of a proposed new Air Force One was perched on the coffee table in the Oval Office. Its Trump-designed red, white and blue color scheme glistened under the Oval Office lights.

In this June 20, 2019, photo, a model of the new Air Force One design sits on a table during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Seated behind the plane were Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose visit to Washington on Thursday to discuss trade and tariffs was suddenly upstaged by the rising tensions in the Middle East. With reporters peppering Trump with a torrent of questions about how he would respond to Tehran, the president took a moment to extoll the virtues of the new presidential plane. “It’s going to be terrific,” he declared.

But what to do about Iran?

“You’ll find out. You’ll find out,” Trump said. “They made a very big mistake.”

The president, who had just come from a briefing on the incident, seemed to telegraph what he had learned, declaring, “I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth.”

“I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it,” he said.

Over a year earlier, Trump had defied most of the United States’ allies by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and strengthening sanctions on the regime, choking the Iranian economy and pushing Tehran to escalate tensions. Trudeau, who largely looked on in silence while Trump fielded questions, used his brief remarks to highlight the need for close coordination among nations.

“We look forward to discussing with our closest ally — their perspectives on this — and how we can move forward as an international community,” the Canadian prime minister said.

Protesters outside the White House after US President Donald Trump tweeted that “Iran made a very big mistake” by shooting down a US drone over the Strait of Hormuz, June 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Trump, for his part, made no mention of alliances.

Trudeau’s meeting later that afternoon with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was abruptly cancelled when McConnell was summoned to the White House for a briefing on Iran.

But there was a glaring omission on the invitation list for briefing top congressional leaders and national security committee chairmen.

The heads of the House and Senate foreign relations committees were quickly added once the White House was reminded the panels have jurisdiction over the War Powers Act, according to a congressional aide familiar with the situation.

Once assembled, the lawmakers around the table made their case, one by one. Trump seemed eager to hear their opinions, even those of House Democrats who have launched a slew of investigations into the president.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY, left), and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined at center rear by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) at the Capitol in Washington, DC, June 20, 2019. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

“These conflicts have a way of escalating,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the president. Even if Trump didn’t intend to go to war, Schumer said, he could “bumble” into one.

The legislators saw “a commander in chief who struggled with the issue,” said Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “It was painful for him.”

Democrats made the case for caution, for partnering with allies, for taking a breath to deescalate, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would put it later. Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff told the administration it could not continue to rely on the war authorizations approved by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

White House reporters and photographers trained their eyes on a West Wing side door where the legislators would emerge, looking for any clues to what had transpired. When the legislators did turn up, there was a perplexing image: Schumer pumped his arms skyward in a celebratory “raise the roof” gesture while Pelosi cheerfully clapped.

Had the Democrats talked the president out of war? Had some sort of deal been struck?

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (C) and National security adviser John Bolton (R) look on as President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House, June 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Neither. It turned out Schumer had just relayed the happy news that his elderly mother had been released from the hospital.

“We left with the idea the president was going to consider some options,” Pelosi said.

Televisions across the White House were tuned, as usual, to Fox News. Tucker Carlson’s image flickered on the screen as he made his case earlier in the week against going to war with Iran.

Carlson was making a similar case to Trump in private, according to a White House official and a Republican close to the West Wing.

Trump had been soliciting a wide array of opinions about Iran after a pair of tankers were damaged a week earlier near the Strait of Hormuz, an incident US officials blamed on the Iranians. The president was growing frustrated with his national security adviser John Bolton’s advocacy for a strike, the officials said.

An oil tanker on fire in the Gulf of Oman, June 13, 2019 near the strategic Strait of Hormuz where two ships were reportedly attacked. (AP Photo/ISNA)

The attack on the drone put the military option on the table.

But when Trump asked his question Thursday about how many Iranians could die in the strikes, the answer gave him pause. He was told 150 Iranian lives were at stake.

“I thought about it for a second,” Trump told NBC, “and I said: ‘You know what? They shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it. And here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead.’ And I didn’t like it. I didn’t think, I didn’t think it was proportionate.”

The president, long opposed to being drawn into a military conflict in the Middle East and in particular with an unpredictable foe like Iran, played up the drama of the moment. He tweeted Friday morning that the military had been “cocked and loaded” and that the weaponry was only 10 minutes away from being deployed.

As the day went on, a sense of normalcy returned to the White House.

US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump greet attendees of the annual Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House, June 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

On Friday afternoon, lawmakers filtered into the White House south lawn for the annual congressional picnic — just steps away from the windowless, basement Situation Room where security officials had debated what could come next.

Risch’s prediction: “There’s going to be something more proportional, obviously, and I suspect it’s going to be not kinetic action.”