In Iran, the worm turned

Well, the New York Times has paused from exploiting the Tucson shooting long enough to report some real news: confirmation (more or less) that it was indeed an American-Israeli computer "worm" that that infiltrated Iran's nuclear bomb program some months ago and set it back by years.

It seems that the Israelis cloned the Persian effort at a facility in the Negev desert, while a German-American program identified the weaknesses in the Siemens computers that the company had sold to Iran. That enabled the Idaho National Laboratory to develop the target Stuxnet worm, which sent the centrifuges spinning out of control while sending normal readings back to the Iranian technicians.

Launched by the Bush administration, the effort was speeded up after President Obama took office. Bipartisanship we can believe in!

The worm was apparently distributed fairly widely, but was so brilliantly contrived that it would only damage the centrifuges that were its intended target. A pleasing irony in the whole program is that the centrifuges (from the Netherlands to Pakistan to Iran) were so crude that the Americans, when they tried to clone the Iranian plant, had a terrible time getting them to work. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On being a Pole during World War II

Many years ago, I hitchhiked from Paris to Perugia with this young woman. She was Polish--born in Lwow in the southeast, her father likely murdered in the Katyn Forest massacre, herself sent to Siberia with her mother and sister. They were among the minority of deportees who were rescued after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and Stalin was persuaded to scratch up a Polish army to fight on the western front. They were sent first to Iran, then the women and children were scattered all over the world, an experience that left Basia fluent in Russian, Arabic, French, and English, and Polish of course; in the spring of 1955, when I took this photo, she was heading to Perugia to perfect her Italian.

This all came alive to me again while reading the magnificent Bloodlands, an account of central Europe's agony from the 1930s to the 1950s. This in turn led me to borrow The Polish Deportees of World War II, containing first-hand accounts of this great hegira and the suffering it entailed. (Roughly ten percent of the Poles died in Iran or en route to it, of disease and malnutrition from their Russian exile--and these, remember, were from the select groups that actually got out of the Gulag, and those in turn were the hardiest of the deportees, who survived weeks in cattle cars or horse-drawn sleighs en route to the Russian outback.)

Lots of those Polish young men died in the Italian campaign, at Monte Cassino and elsewhere. I wonder if Basia knew that? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On bombing Iran

I've always assumed that when Iran's nuclear program got so far along that bombs were an inevitable product, the Israelis would blast the facilities out of existence, as it has done to other nations in the past. Not so fast, says Kenneth Pollack in The National Interest:

Most American (and Israeli) nuclear experts now think that Tehran is so far along that it could rebuild the entire program and be back to where it is at present in just a year or two. And many already fear that Iran has secret facilities, or is hiding key machinery and material for its nuclear program—then the program wouldn’t be set back much at all by a military campaign.

It is also worth keeping in mind that Iran probably will retaliate against the United States.... The Islamic Republic has a formidable capacity to employ terrorism and a lot of allies, like Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who could also cause a great deal of damage on Tehran’s behalf. If there is anyone out there who might be able to replicate a terrorist attack as terrible as 9/11, it is Iran.

Sanctions, he thinks, have a better chance of success--but tougher sanctions, allied with covert action and a greater emphasis on human rights. South Africa is the model here: the whole world was ready to dump on South Africa, especially the Good People, not for its nukes but for the odiousness of its regime. Worth a read. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Sloppy work at the Natanz plant

Here's that Iranian nuclear plant that may or may not have been attacked by a computer virus. The NYT has a more thoughtful piece on the cyber assault in today's paper, with the most interesting bit being the conclusion that the attack was terribly sloppy. When have Israeli spooks every been sloppy? As an example of how good the IDF and Mossad are, the same story mentions that when Israeli jets destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor three years ago, the Syrian anti-aircraft batteries had been switched off, so they couldn't intercept.

The photo is credited to Majid Saeedi. Who do you suppose he works for? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Has the Israeli attack begun?

Almost in passing yesterday, the New York Times reported rumors that Iran's nuclear program is under attack by computer warriors--spooks that actually have access to the Iranian computers, which aren't connected to the internet. That requires three things: sophistication in cyberwarfare, a great desire to stop the Persian Bomb, and agents on the ground in Iran. The Gray Lady lists three leading suspects: the U.S., Israel, and Britain. Post-Blair, I think we can rule out the UK. The U.S. of course is a possibility--the Obama administration seems to favor standoff warfare to the belt-buckle sort, as it has displayed with its generous use of drone attacks in Pakistan. But after years--generations!--of emasculating the CIA, where would we get the agents capable of slipping a thumb drive into the computer that runs the Persian version of Los Alamos?

No, I'll lay my bet on Israel.  Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Ailing hiker for sale

Is Iran a great country, or what? Having jailed three American hikers for over a year, it is now offering one of them for sale at a knock-down rate of $500,000. It seems she is sick. What do you suppose a healthy male American goes for, in the demented minds of the mullahs? A million, I suppose. D'you think they might sell the three captives as a package, say for $2 million? Or perhaps, like North Korea, they'd settle for a visit by Jimmy Carter. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A North Korean torpedo

Agence France-Presse reports what most of us assumed from the start: that people in both Koreas are convinced that that South Korean warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, "in a premeditated operation approved by Kim Jong-Il," as a Nork army officer reportedly told a contact in the South. Meanwhile, Iran is holding war games in the Straits of Hormuz, and the Iranians and the Norks are exchanging high-level visits.

A year or so ago, the Good People were convinced that all Barack Obama had to do was press the Reset Button, and all would be well with the world. Hasn't worked out that way, has it? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On joining the ballistic missile club

As a reason to worry about Iran's nuclear and space ambitions, note this story from the India Times:

India on Sunday successfully test-fired its indigenous Agni-III ballistic missile, which has a range of over 3,500 km and can even strike targets deep inside China. This paves the way for induction of the nuclear-capable missile into the armed forces and consolidates India’s position among a select group of nations having intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) capability.

We don't worry much about India's nuclear arsenal, because, well, India is a democracy and the people do speak English, Muffy. Anyhow, a 2175-mile IRBM is more China's problem than ours, or Europe's.

The situation looks rather different if you put a missile similar to the Agni-III in northwestern Iran. Berlin, Stockholm, and Rome are all within its range, and it wouldn't take much of a boost to add Paris and London to the list. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford