WarSclerotic

Ahead of its annual al-Quds Day orgy of Israel-bashing on Friday, Iran’s parliament has unanimously passed legislation banning “any cooperation” with Israel — specifically including the use of Israeli computer hardware and software — as a crime against God.

In normal years, al-Quds day is marked across the Islamic Republic by orchestrated anti-Israel marches and speeches, the trampling and burning of Israeli flags, and other displays of hatred rather at odds with the regime’s frequent assurances to the international community that its friendly and peace-loving leaders have no interest whatsoever in acquiring nuclear weapons.

But this year, bedeviled by the fiendish COVID-19 (which “supreme leader” Ali Khamenei has claimed was partly “built for Iran” by the similarly loathed United States), the regime is having to scale back its mass public displays of animosity to Israel.

A poster from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website calling for Israel’s destruction that uses the term “final solution,” which usually refers to the Nazi policy of genocide against Jews during the Holocaust. (via english.khamenei.ir)

And so Khamenei has this week resorted to calling online for a “final solution” to the Israel problem, and for arming the West Bank, “just as Gaza,” in order to expedite it. Underlining the utter hypocrisy of his regime’s ostensible humanitarian concern for the Palestinian people, he has been castigating the United Arab Emirates for committing nothing less than “the biggest treachery… [in] the history of the Arab world” — by delivering 16 tons of coronavirus aid for the Palestinians via Ben Gurion Airport.

And his parliament has resorted to criminalizing Israeli tech.

Under the legislation passed Monday, any cooperation with “the Zionist regime” is henceforth to be considered “equal to enmity towards God and corruption on earth,” according to the semi-state news site Fars. “All Iranian bodies are required to use the country’s regional and international capacities to confront the Zionist regime’s measures,” it reported, and, specifically, “activities of the Israeli software platforms in Iran and using its hardware and software products is forbidden.”

Rather than protesting this latest legislative iteration of the ayatollahs’ relentless and doomed efforts to precipitate Israel’s demise, the free world might consider applauding the ban, if not actively demanding its enforcement, in those areas where it does not directly spell the deaths of innocents.

Because, given the centrality of Israeli innovation and technology to so many aspects of modern life, the new anti-Israel legislation, if implemented as required by the Iranian parliament, will set Iran back decades, raise Iranian public disaffection with the repressive ayatollahs to new heights, and likely spell the demise of the brutal, rapacious and cynical regime.

A female employee of the Iranian Interior Ministry works on her computer, as a portrait of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen on a screen, in Tehran, Dec. 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

For a start, if the solemnly enacted legislation of the Majlis is to be regarded as anything other than hot air, Iran must now shut down all of its computers. They all feature Intel chips and/or technologies designed and/or developed in Israel.

As the then-president of Intel Israel, Mooly Eden, explained to The Times of Israel back in 2014, Israeli-developed chips and technologies are simply the mainstay of computer design. Intel set up shop in Israel in the 1970s, and Intel Haifa then developed the 8088 processor — which was used in the IBM PC, the first popular Microsoft-based computer for home use. Intel Israel has developed increasingly advanced processors through the decades ever since, for PCs, for tablets and for laptops. “The whole laptop revolution was kicked off by the Pentium M (Banias) processor, developed in Israel in 2003,” Eden noted.

Apple, which has been using Intel chips since 2009, also maintains a major R&D center in Israel.

A visitor interacts with a display by Intel, at a technology exhibit at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Tel Aviv on September 3, 2019 (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Of course, Iran will henceforth have rather less need for computers anyway, since its new legislation means it will also have to stop using the internet. That’s because routers produced by Cisco Systems are a core component of the internet’s backbone — transferring information between computer networks at dizzying speeds — and Cisco Israel is central to the US multinational’s ongoing router development. “At the heart” of Cisco’s latest router, the firm announced last December, for instance, “is the Cisco Silicon One chip which is based on technology developed by Leaba” — a Caesarea firm acquired by Cisco four years ago.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, third from right, at the January 2017 launch of the Digital Starter project at the Google offices in Tel Aviv; In the picture are also Wix President Nir Zohar (right) and Google Israel CEO Meir Brand, fifth from right (Courtesy: Tomer Foltyn)

But then Iran would be immensely constrained in using the internet anyhow, since, under the new legislation, it’s hard to see which search engines law-abiding Iranians would be allowed to use. Google does enormous amounts of R&D work in Israel, across a wide array of products. One small example: “Google Suggest,” which starts searching for you even as you type in your request — developed in Israel.

As for the Bing search engine, well, that’s a Microsoft product. And as Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer famously declared on a visit to Israel in 2008 (17 years after the firm set up its first R&D division outside the US here), “Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company.” (Hailing Israel’s “remarkable” tech on a subsequent trip four years later, Ballmer noted that Microsoft employs more workers per capita in Israel than anywhere else on earth.)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (left) on stage with MS Israel CEO Danny Yamin in 2012 (Chen Galili, Shilopro)

Cloud storage of data is going to be a problem from now on too, since the technology behind it is an Israeli specialty. Indeed generally, says Saul Singer, co-author of the bestselling “Start-Up Nation” who helped me with a lot of the material for this article, Israel is “big on routers and chips and all the core infrastructure that drives technology.”

The Iranians will also now obviously have to hang up their smartphones. Going back to Motorola, which was doing R&D in Israel even before Intel, cellphones are riddled with Israeli tech.

In fact all of Iran’s international connections — communications, banking, freight shipping, even its vital oil exports — are going to require careful examination by the Majlis, for fear of cooperation with us Zionists.

Depending on how stringently it interprets its law, Iran may have to unilaterally constrain its already sanctioned international banking interactions, because numerous major international banks — Citibank, RBS, Deutche Bank et al — do R&D in Israel, have bought Israeli companies, and/or use Israeli cyber systems.

Shipping is going to be a problem, since Freightos — the Expedia of global freight shipping — is, well, Israeli.

A part of Pardis petrochemical complex facilities in Assalouyeh on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, Iran, Sept. 4, 2018. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

Iran’s vital oil exports are going to take a massive hit: The international oil refineries that handle its black gold rely on Israeli-developed monitoring systems, Israeli cyber defense systems and other protective technology developed in Israel.

Back home, many of its cars are going to have to come off the roads. It imports tens of thousands of vehicles each year, and it’s a safe bet that many of them include features developed in Israel. Manufacturers such as General Motors have technology centers in Israel, their innovations feeding into the production process. Israel’s Mobileye, meanwhile, has its driver-assistance technology installed in over 40 million cars — over 300 models.

An unidentified Iranian female patient lies for her heart scan at the Shariati hospital, in Tehran, Iran, October 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iran’s health services are going to be terribly affected. Medtronic, the largest medical device company in the world, whose equipment is a mainstay of hospitals the world over, has acquired a great deal of Israeli tech and maintains an Israeli R&D center.

Indeed, medical innovation is a major Israeli focus, and multinationals have long been engaged here, buying Israeli startups and setting up their own centers here. General Electric and Change Healthcare also maintain major healthcare divisions here.

An Israeli system engineer keeps watch over a production line at the Teva factory in Jerusalem. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

Lots of drugs are now off-limits, too. Teva, the world’s largest generic drug manufacturer is henceforth forbidden, which means no more use of its patented Copaxone treatment for multiple sclerosis. Many other of the most important drugs in the world, manufactured by global pharmaceutical behemoths, include Israeli development.

Cardiology is going to be constrained, too; the flexible stent, which has saved millions of lives, was pioneered a quarter century ago by Israel’s Medinol.

On and on it goes.

In this July 16, 2015 photo, Iranians look at a Renault sedan at a dealership in northern Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The list of major companies that invest in, own and/or deeply engage with Israeli firms and innovators, that also have done business with Iran — and are thus now presumably off-limits for all Iranians — and that I haven’t mentioned above, also includes, to give just 10 examples (with their Israel activities): Boeing (3D parts printing, cockpit systems); Daimler (tech hub; car tech R&D); Deutsche Telekom (cyber-security innovation lab); Hyundai (innovation hub, investments); LG (smart TVs, smartphones, cybersecurity); Renault (innovation lab, smart car incubator, auto-tech fund); Samsung (software tech; startup investments); Siemens (innovation lab); Volkswagen (tech hub in Tel Aviv); Volvo (tech investments, innovation center)… You get the idea.

Saul Singer with a copy of “Start-Up Nation” (Photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Jerusalem-based Singer (whose “Start-Up Nation” is itself now of course off-limits in Iran) suggests Iranians might still be okay with pocket calculators and landlines, though he’s not even sure about that.

“It’s endless,” he said, when considering the impact the Majlis ban on all things Israeli will have. “If you count all the Fortune 500 companies that have critical development centers in Israel — including Siemens, an Iranian favorite, IBM, GE… — there’s not much left. I guess they would have to go back to pen and paper, horses, and home visits by doctors with stethoscopes and World War II-era hospitals.”

An Iran without “Israel inside,” Singer said, “would make North Korea look advanced and cosmopolitan. Essentially, Iran would go back to the world of 50 years ago, maybe more. It would look like a huge Amish colony in Muslim garb

An Iran without “Israel inside,” Singer said, “would make North Korea look advanced and cosmopolitan. Essentially, Iran would go back to the world of 50 years ago, maybe more. It would look like a huge Amish colony in Muslim garb. Meanwhile, it would be party time in the US, Israel, and most of the Arab world.”

On the other hand, of course, Iran could acknowledge the centrality of Israeli innovation to the improved functioning and health of society, stop subverting its diminishing resources to the vile cause of wiping us out, and rejoin the family of nations. Legislators of the Majlis, seriously now, do you truly believe that would be a crime against God?

Just two months ago, a senior Iranian cleric was quoted saying that, if “Zionists” were the first to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus (of this writing, COVID-19 has killed over 7,000 Iranians), it would be permitted for use by Iranians. Would that too, now, constitute a criminal act?

Ali Khamenei gets out of a BMW in a 2013 photograph (ISNA)

Meantime, Supreme Leader Khamenei himself will evidently need not only to shut down his laptop and dump his cellphone, but also to hurriedly rethink his transportation arrangements.

German manufacturer BMW, which noted in 2019 that it “has been collaborating with Israeli firms from various technology fields for a number of years,” announced plans for a new Tel Aviv “office for trend and technology scouting in Israel.”

Back in 2013, Khamenei was pictured emerging from his BMW. As of this week’s legislation, for any Iranian to do so, much less the supreme leader, would most emphatically be a crime against God.

With reporting by Shoshanna Solomon

The former head of Military Intelligence on Tuesday said a sophisticated cyberattack on an Iranian port last week appeared to be an Israeli retaliation to Tehran’s failed attempted hacking of Israel’s water companies last month, sending a message that Jerusalem could significantly harm Iran’s economy if attacks on Israeli civilian infrastructure continued.

This appears to indicate that Israel has adopted a “tit-for-tat” strategy in responding to Iranian cyber aggression — a tactic already used by the Israeli military with physical, or kinetic, attacks — as the digital realm becomes increasingly important in modern warfare.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, an influential former IDF intelligence chief and current head of the leading Institute for National Security Studies think tank, said the alleged Israeli cyberattack could be seen as a message to Iran that Jerusalem would not accept attempts to damage its civilian infrastructure.

“If Israel was the one that responded to the Iranian attack against civilian infrastructure (water and sewage), Israel is making it clear that civilian systems ought to be left out of fighting,” Yadlin wrote Tuesday, hedging his assessment with the reservations that are common in Israeli officials looking to preserve a degree of ambiguity about Israel’s military activities abroad.

Illustrative: Soldiers of the IDF’s signal (C41) corps (Courtesy: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)

“This is a significant message about the vulnerability of Iran’s economic systems to Israeli cyber capabilities,” he wrote in a series of tweets.

The Shahid Rajaee port facility in the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas (Iran Ports and Maritime Organization)

Iran has faced a major financial crisis in recent years when the United States put in place a series of crushing economic sanctions after withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, which offered relief from these measures in exchange for Tehran abandoning aspects of its atomic program.

Yadlin noted the growing importance of the digital realm in modern warfare, as an ever-greater portion of our daily lives is controlled by internet-connected computer systems. Once considered distinct from the physical battles waged between countries, the retired general said, cyber warfare appeared to be becoming just another area in which militaries can square off against one another.

The former intel chief indicated that the Iranian cyber attack on Israeli water infrastructure in April was a response to Israel’s ongoing efforts against Iran’s military presence and proxies in Syria. Israel has for years been bombing bases and convoys of Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias in Syria in order to prevent them from establishing a permanent military presence in the country from which to carry out attacks against the Jewish state and to halt the spread of advanced weapons to Hezbollah and other terror groups in the region. These strikes have reportedly stepped up in recent months.

Satellite images purporting to show the damage to a missile factory outside Aleppo, Syria, caused by airstrikes attributed to Israel on May 4, which were released on May 7, 2020. (ImageSat International)

“Cyber joins the earth, naval and air dimensions as a significant warfare dimension. It is important to note — both Iran (which is being attacked kinetically in Syria) and the United States (after the downing of its advanced unmanned aerial vehicle last summer) have used cyber responses when they didn’t want to escalate matters kinetically,” he wrote.

Yadlin was referring to reports that the US carried out a series of cyberattacks on Iranian weapons systems after the Iranian military shot down an American drone that Tehran said entered its airspace last June.

The former Military Intelligence chief echoed comments made by an unnamed Western official on Tuesday, who also told Israeli TV that the cyberattack on the Iranian port on May 9, which shut it down completely and caused widespread chaos at the site, was a response to an apparent Iranian attempt to sabotage Israel’s water and sewage infrastructure.

Amos Yadlin speaks during an event organized by IsraPresse for the French-speaking community at the Begin Heritage Institute, Jerusalem, February 22, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

“The cyberattack on the [Shahid Rajaee port] in Iran was an Israeli response to the cyberattack that [the Iranians] carried out against Israel two weeks ago against Mekorot [national water company] components — an attack that failed,” the official from a Western country told Channel 12 news, on condition of anonymity.

“Israel hopes that [the Iranians] stop there. They attacked water infrastructure components. They didn’t really cause damage — but they crossed a line and [Israel] needed to retaliate,” the official said.

The official appeared to misspeak regarding the date of the alleged Iranian cyberattack, which was not reported to have occurred two weeks ago, but over three weeks ago, in late April.

According to the Ynet news site, the alleged Iranian attack targeted at least six water installations throughout Israel on April 24-25, causing minor disruptions.

The Eshkol water filtration plant in northern Israel, on April 17, 2007. (Moshe Shai/FLASH90)

One station saw a pump go online by itself, another had its entire operation system taken over, and a third noted “inconsistencies during an unplanned change to its figures,” the news outlet reported, without attributing the information.

Other stations similarly identified attempts to hack into their systems, but each of these were caught earlier and resolved quickly, according to Ynet.

However, despite these issues at individual stations, the Water Authority said “there was no harm to the water supply and it operated, and continues to operate, without interruption.”

A May 7 meeting of the high-level security cabinet, the first to be held in months, reportedly dealt in part with this Iranian attempt.

On May 9, Israel allegedly responded to these attempted hacks, carrying out a cyberattack on the Shahid Rajaee port — one of Iran’s most important terminals — shutting it down completely and causing widespread chaos, the Washington Post reported Monday.

“Computers that regulate the flow of vessels, trucks and goods all crashed at once, ­creating massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility,” the Post reported.

The port is a newly constructed shipping terminal in the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas, on the Strait of Hormuz.

“There was total disarray,” a security official, who spoke on the condition that his identity and national affiliation not be revealed, told the Post.

Iran later acknowledged that an unknown foreign hacker had knocked the port’s computers offline, but denied the severity of the attack.

Satellite images of the port on May 11 and May 12 taken by Planet Labs and seen by The Times of Israel indeed show scads of ships idling off the port and a buildup of containers on dry land, days after the alleged Israeli cyberattack.

There was no comment from the Israeli embassy in Washington or the Israel Defense Forces, the report said.

Iran — whose regime avowedly seeks Israel’s destruction — and Israel have engaged in covert cyber-warfare for over a decade, including reported efforts by the Jewish state and US to remotely sabotage the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in 2010 using an advanced cyber weapon known as Stuxnet.

Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.