U.S. moving submersibles to Persian Gulf to oppose Iran

WASHINGTON — The Navy is rushing dozens of unmanned underwater craft to the Persian Gulf to help detect and destroy mines in a major military buildup aimed at preventing Iran from closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the event of a crisis, U.S. officials said.

The tiny SeaFox submersibles each carry an underwater television camera, homing sonar and an explosive charge. The Navy bought them in May after an urgent request by Marine Gen. James Mattis, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.

Each submersible is about 4 feet long and weighs less than 100 pounds. The craft are intended to boost U.S. military capabilities as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program appear to have stalled. Three rounds of talks since April between Iran and the five countries in the United Nations Security Council plus Germany have made little progress.

Some U.S. officials are wary that Iran may respond to tightening sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, including a European Union oil embargo, by launching or sponsoring attacks on oil tankers or platforms in the Persian Gulf. Some officials in Tehran have threatened to close the narrow waterway, a  choke point for a fifth of the oil traded worldwide.

The first of the SeaFox submersibles arrived in the Gulf in recent weeks, officials said, along with four MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters and four minesweeping ships, part of a larger buildup of U.S. naval, air and ground forces in the region aimed at Iran.

The U.S. already has sent two aircraft carriers and a squadron of F-22 fighters to the Persian Gulf, and is keeping two U.S. army brigades in Kuwait. Though much of the buildup has been publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, the deployment of the submersibles has not been publicly disclosed, apparently to avoid alerting Iran.

The SeaFox is small enough to be deployed from helicopters and even small rubber boats, but it also can be dropped off the back of a minesweeper. It is controlled by a fiber optic cable and sends live video back to a camera operator.

It can be used against floating or drifting mines, which Iran has used in the past. It operates up to 300 meters deep, and moves at speeds of up to six knots. But the $100,000 weapon is on a what amounts to a suicide mission. The “built-in, large caliber shaped charge” it carries destroys the mine but also the vehicle itself.

Former CIA spy advocates overthrow of Iranian regime

Reza Kahlili, living in the shadows with a fake name and disguise, worked from inside the Revolutionary Guard. He warns of terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. and a plot to destroy Israel.

By David Zucchino

ARLINGTON, Va. — His disguise consists of a blue surgeon's mask, sunglasses and a baseball cap that reads "Free Iran." A small modulator distorts his voice. He uses a pseudonym, Reza Kahlili.
He lives in fear, he says, because his years as a paid spy for the CIA inside Iran have made him an assassination target of Iran's government. He worries about his wife and children, who live with him in California.

 At the same time, implausibly, he has become one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the U.S. advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government.

 For the last two years, Kahlili has gone semipublic with a memoir, a blog, op-ed pieces and invitation-only speeches at think tanks. He warns that Iran operates terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States and is determined to build nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. The U.S. should respond, he argues, by supporting the opposition inside Iran.

 He travels furtively between appearances, working as a Pentagon consultant and as a member of a domestic security task force.

 "There's probably nobody better on our side in explaining the mind-set of those in power in Iran," said Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst who directs the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. "He understands the ideological sources of Iran's nuclear program."

 U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Kahlili has convinced him of the importance of supporting the opposition and hardening sanctions against Iran.
 "I thought I knew a lot about Iran until meeting with him," King said on a New York political radio program in January. At the time, Kahlili was a guest and King was a guest-host, but the two had previously met in the congressman's office.

 "If you're going to take this issue seriously, the one person you have to consult with and read his writings is Reza Kahlili," King said.

 In a quiet hotel lounge in Arlington, Kahlili is not wearing his disguise or using his voice modulator for a meeting with a reporter.

 "You'd be shocked by how easily agents from the Revolutionary Guard come and go inside the United States every day," Kahlili says in a near-whisper, bent over a table in a dark corner.
 A soft-spoken man in his mid-50s, Kahlili is wearing jeans, a sports shirt and a black coat. He's of average height and weight, with a smattering of facial hair.

He made certain he wasn't followed, he says, and performed a quick security check of the hotel.
 "They'd kill me if they could find me," he says of Iranian agents.

 Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington, D.C., said he had confirmed that Kahlili was a longtime operative of a U.S. intelligence agency, adding: "He has insights on Iran most people in the U.S. intelligence community don't have."

 For covert operatives, clearance agreements with the CIA often prohibit public acknowledgment of the agreement itself or of the CIA. A CIA spokesman, Todd D. Ebitz, said the agency had no comment on Kahlili.

 Brian Weidner, program coordinator for Iran instruction at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy, confirmed that Kahlili is a paid lecturer for the Pentagon agency. Other instructors are videotaped, Kahlili says, but his lectures are audio-only to protect his identity.

 ***

 Kahlili says he lived a double life until the mid-1990s, passing along secrets to the CIA and recruiting Revolutionary Guards for the agency. In a sense, he resumed his double identity after publishing his 2010 memoir; he was now a former covert agent who had thrust himself into the public eye.

 He rarely leaves home — "my bunker," he jokes — and shuns social situations.

 For years, his mother in Iran berated him for working for a regime she despised; she died never knowing about his CIA spy work, he says. His children know nothing of his background. His Iranian wife was unaware of his spying for years, and was hurt, angry and terrified when he finally told her.
 "It took a long time for that to heal, and for her to understand why I did it," Kahlili says. Though his wife is pleased that he has publicized Iran's human rights abuses, he says, she has begged him to go back into hiding.

 He is pained by regrets. "I put my family in danger without giving it much thought," he says. "They didn't know what I'd done, but they were in as much danger as I was."

 The spy story Kahlili tells in his book, and in several interviews with The Times, features coded messages, disinformation, clandestine meetings and international intrigue.

 After graduating from USC, Kahlili returned to Iran just before the 1979 revolution toppled the Shah. A childhood friend recruited him into the Revolutionary Guard, where he gained an insider's access to the new Islamic government — and where he was to turn against the regime.

U.S. too weak to wage war against Iran: Washington ambassador

TEHRAN – U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Donald Beyer has said that given the severe economic crisis in the United States the country’s military option against Tehran is beyond the realms of possibility.
 
The U.S. overall debt has exceeded $16 trillion and the country’s unemployment rate stands at 8.2 percent, Beyer said, according to Press TV.
 
The low-spending level in the U.S. budget over the past two years is unprecedented, the American envoy said, adding that there is a tacit consensus among Democrats and Republicans that the country’s military budget needs to be reduced.

With 900 military bases abroad, the U.S. has the highest military expenditure in the world, however the matter is no longer acceptable, he noted.
 
Under the prevailing circumstances, no one considers war with Iran as an option, Beyer stated.

The United States and the Zionist regime have frequently threatened threatened to use military force against Iran if Tehran does not stop its nuclear program.
 
As a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation regime Iran is legally entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Iranian crude holding over $100 in Asian markets

TEHRAN - Iranian crude oil has traded at over $100 per barrel with Asian refineries this week as the Iranian parliament forwarded a proposal to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz to prevent the passage of tankers that carry oil to countries that have imposed sanctions on Iran, the Mehr News Agency reported.

The measure was response to the European Union’s oil embargo on Iran that took effect on July 1 as well as a U.S. law that penalizes countries that do business with the Central Bank of Iran by denying their banks access to the United States market. The law came into force on June 28.

On June 9 Iran slammed fellow OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates as oil quota "violators", accusing them of depressing global crude prices by over-pumping.

Iran's OPEC representative, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, said Tehran had officially protested to OPEC that Saudi Arabia was "saturating the market" under pressure from the United States and the European Union, according to the IRNA News Agency.

"It is not right that two or three countries compensate for a country that is being sanctioned. OPEC members should not work against each other," Khatibi was quoted as saying.

On June 30 Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi called for an emergency OPEC meeting, saying the current market value of oil has become "illogical."

Some OPEC countries including Venezuela and Algeria responded to Iran’s call for emergency meeting, a move which was influential in pushing prices up.

Qasemi had said at a recent OPEC meeting in Vienna the member states agreed to hold emergency meeting if oil prices fell below $100 per barrel.

Qasemi said that if OPEC members do not observe their quota and the organization's production ceiling of 30 million barrel per day, the market will fall into chaos.

Brent crude was trading at $95.51 per barrel in London on Friday.

Saudis are buying nuclear-capable missiles from China

DEBKAfile  Exclusive Report 

debkafile’s military sources report that Saudi Arabia has set its feet on the path to a nuclear weapon capability and is negotiating in Beijng the purchase of Chinese nuclear-capable Dong-Fen 21 ((NATO-codenamed CSS-5) ballistic missile.

China, which has agreed to the transaction in principle, would also build a base of operations near Riyadh for the new Saudi purchases.

As we reported last year, Saudi Arabia has struck a deal with Pakistan for the availability on demand of a nuclear warhead from Islamabad’s arsenal for fitting onto a ballistic missile.

Riyadh owns a direct interest in the two most active Middle East issues: Iran and Syria.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been advancing for two decades regardless of countless attempts at restraint by every diplomatic tool under the sun and a rising scale of sanctions – to no avail.

Tehran marches on regardless of impediments. In Istanbul, Tuesday, July 3, the six powers and Iran failed the fourth attempt to reach an accommodation on Iran’s nuclear program.

The Syrian ruler Bashar Assad remains equally undeterred by international condemnation. Saturday, June 30, the US and Russia again failed to agree on a joint plan of action in Syria.

Saudi forces have been poised for action in Syria on the Jordanian and Iraqi borders since US Secretary of State Leon Panetta visited Riyadh in late June.

On July 1, they redoubled their military preparedness when the European Union clamped down an oil embargo on Iran. The Saudis, the US Fifth Fleet and the entire Gulf region are since braced for Iranian reprisals which could come in the form of closure by Tehran of the vital Straits of Hormuz to shipping or strikes against the Gulf emirates’ oil exporting facilities.

Tension shot up again when Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched a three-day missile drill against simulated enemy bases in the region – expanding its threats to include US forces and bases in the region, Israel and Turkey.

WATCH VIDEO

Oil prices surge on Iran tensions, Norway strike

By AFP

Oil prices shot up Tuesday on fresh tensions over Iran, where lawmakers threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for oil sanctions, and after a strike shuttered production in Norway.

New York's main contract, light sweet crude for August, soared $3.91 to close at $87.66 a barrel.

In London trade, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in August settled at $100.68 a barrel, jumping $3.34 from Monday's closing level.

"With Iran oil out and Norway on strike it is giving the oil market reason to bounce!" said Phil Flynn at Price Futures Group.

Crude prices had fallen Monday in the wake of weak economic data in China, the world's biggest energy consumer; the first fall in US manufacturing in three years; and as markets assessed the impact of a European Union embargo on Iranian oil.

Full implementation of an EU embargo on Iranian oil took effect on Sunday, provoking anger in Tehran, which says the measures will hurt talks with world powers over its contested nuclear activities.

On Tuesday, oil prices surged higher after Iran test-fired missiles into its central desert region, drawing a US warning that the tests were in violation of UN resolutions that ban Iran from any ballistic weapons activity.

Meanwhile, some 120 lawmakers in Iran's 290-seat parliament backed a draft bill calling for the strategic Strait of Hormuz to be closed to oil tankers headed to Europe in retaliation for an EU embargo on Iranian crude.

Oil market observer bodies and analysts say the EU embargo, coupled with US financial sanctions ramped up on Thursday, are gutting Iran's vital oil exports, which account for half of government revenues.

The International Energy Agency says Iranian crude exports in May appear to have slipped to 1.5 million barrels per day (mbpd) as the market braced for the embargo, which has been phased in since being announced January 23.

Oil prices also gained support from a 10-day-old strike by more than 700 North Sea oil workers in Norway. The union action over pensions has cut about 10 percent of the total production of the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, according to the Norwegian Oil Industry Association.

U.S. Adds Forces in Persian Gulf, a Signal to Iran

By THOM SHANKER, ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates.

The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”

But at a moment that the United States and its allies are beginning to enforce a much broader embargo on Iran’s oil exports, meant to force the country to take seriously the negotiations over sharply limiting its nuclear program, the buildup carries significant risks, including that Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps could decide to lash out against the increased presence.

The most visible elements of this buildup are Navy ships designed to vastly enhance the ability to patrol the Strait of Hormuz — and to reopen the narrow waterway should Iran attempt to mine it to prevent Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters from sending their tankers through the vital passage.
The Navy has doubled the number of minesweepers assigned to the region, to eight vessels, in what military officers describe as a purely defensive move.

“The message to Iran is, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” one senior Defense Department official said. “Don’t even think about closing the strait. We’ll clear the mines. Don’t even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.” Like others interviewed, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the diplomatic and military situation.

Since late spring, stealthy F-22 and older F-15C warplanes have moved into two separate bases in the Persian Gulf to bolster the combat jets already in the region and the carrier strike groups that are on constant tours of the area. Those additional attack aircraft give the United States military greater capability against coastal missile batteries that could threaten shipping, as well as the reach to strike other targets deeper inside Iran.

And the Navy, after a crash development program, has moved a converted amphibious transport and docking ship, the Ponce, into the Persian Gulf to serve as the Pentagon’s first floating staging base for military operations or humanitarian assistance.

The initial assignment for the Ponce, Pentagon officials say, is to serve as a logistics and operations hub for mine-clearing. But with a medical suite and helicopter deck, and bunks for combat troops, the Ponce eventually could be used as a base for Special Operations forces to conduct a range of missions, including reconnaissance and counterterrorism, all from international waters.

For President Obama, the combination of negotiations, new sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil revenues and increased military pressure is the latest — and perhaps the most vital — test of what the White House calls a “two track” policy against Iran. In the midst of a presidential election campaign in which his opponent, Mitt Romney, has accused him of being “weak” in dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue, Mr. Obama seeks to project toughness without tipping into a crisis in the region.

At the same time he must signal support for Israel, but not so much support that the Israelis see the buildup as an opportunity to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities, which Mr. Obama’s team believes could set off a war without significantly setting back the Iranian program.

A key motivation for “Olympic Games,” the covert effort to undermine Iran’s enrichment capability with cyberattacks, has been to demonstrate to the Israelis that there are more effective ways to slow the program than to strike from the air.

But this delicate signaling to both Iran and Israel is a complex dance. Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the administration must strike a fine balance between positioning enough forces to deter Iran, but not inadvertently indicate to Iran or Israel that an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites is imminent or inevitable.

Putin to Peres: Israel will regret attacking Iran

TEHRAN - Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Israel will regret it if it launches a military strike on Iran.

Putin made the remarks during a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) on Monday.

During the meeting, Putin urged Israel to learn from negative U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ynetnews reported.

“Look at what happened to the Americans in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I told (U.S. President Barack) Obama the same thing,” Putin stated.

He added, “There is no need to do things too quickly; one should not act without thinking first.”

“Iraq has a pro-Iranian regime after everything that has happened there. These things should be thought out ahead of time before doing something one will regret later,” the Russian president stated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier on Monday following his meeting with Putin, “I believe that we should be doing two things now: Boosting the sanctions (on Iran) and also boosting the demands.”

The Russian president said that the two leaders “spoke in detail about the Syria issue and about the Iranian nuclear program.”

In a brief statement after meeting with Netanyahu, Putin said that their talks covered the situation in Iran and the uprising in Syria, but added that he saw negotiations as the only solution for such matters, ABC News reported.

According to AP, Israel urged the Russian president to step up pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program, but there was no sign of any concessions from Putin.

The Christian Broadcasting Network wrote on Tuesday, “Russia will not step up pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program despite Israel’s urgings.”

Iran plans to build 10 new destroyers

TEHRAN – The deputy commander of the Iranian Navy has announced that Iran plans to build 10 new domestically designed destroyers.


In an interview with the Persian service of the Fars News Agency published on Tuesday, Rear Admiral Abbas Zamini said that the Navy has planned to design and manufacture 10 new destroyers in addition to the Jamaran and Velayat destroyers.

He added that the plan envisaged manufacturing seven destroyers of the Sina class, which were capable of firing missiles, and three destroyers of the Mowj class.

Iran’s first domestically manufactured destroyer, the Jamaran, was launched in February 2010.

The warship can carry helicopters and is equipped with torpedoes and electronic radar. It is 94 meters long and weighs over 1,500 tons.

The destroyer is capable of engaging in surface, air, and undersea warfare.

In September 2011, Navy Commander Habibollah Sayyari announced that the second domestically manufactured destroyer would join the country’s naval fleet in the near future.

Rear Admiral Sayyari said that the Jamaran II (Velayat) was highly advanced and differed greatly from the Jamaran.

Zamini also said that about 70 percent of the project to build the Velayat destroyer had been completed and expressed hope that the destroyer would be launched during the current Iranian calendar year, which started on March 20.

U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say

By Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Julie Tate

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber­warfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel’s military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran’s nuclear-enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

“This is about preparing the battlefield for another type of covert action,” said one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, who added that Flame and Stuxnet were elements of a broader assault that continues today. “Cyber-collection against the Iranian program is way further down the road than this.”

Flame came to light last month after Iran detected a series of cyberattacks on its oil industry. The disruption was directed by Israel in a unilateral operation that apparently caught its American partners off guard, according to several U.S. and Western officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

There has been speculation that Washington had a role in developing Flame, but the collaboration on the virus between the United States and Israel has not been previously confirmed. Commercial security researchers reported last week that Flame contained some of the same code as Stuxnet. Experts described the overlap as DNA-like evidence that the two sets of malware were parallel projects run by the same entity.

Spokesmen for the CIA, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment.

The virus is among the most sophisticated and subversive pieces of malware to be exposed to date. Experts said the program was designed to replicate across even highly secure networks, then control everyday computer functions to send secrets back to its creators. The code could activate computer microphones and cameras, log keyboard strokes, take screen shots, extract geo­location data from images, and send and receive commands and data through Bluetooth wireless technology.

Flame was designed to do all this while masquerading as a routine Microsoft software update; it evaded detection for several years by using a sophisticated program to crack an encryption algorithm.

“This is not something that most security researchers have the skills or resources to do,” said Tom Parker, chief technology officer for FusionX, a security firm that specializes in simulating state-sponsored cyberattacks. He said he does not know who was behind the virus. “You’d expect that of only the most advanced cryptomathematicians, such as those working at NSA.”

Conventional plus cyber

Flame was developed at least five years ago as part of a classified effort code-named Olympic Games, according to officials familiar with U.S. cyber-operations and experts who have scrutinized its code. The U.S.-Israeli collaboration was intended to slow Iran’s nuclear program, reduce the pressure for a conventional military attack and extend the timetable for diplomacy and sanctions.

The cyberattacks augmented conventional sabotage efforts by both countries, including inserting flawed centrifuge parts and other components into Iran’s nuclear supply chain.

The best-known cyberweapon let loose on Iran was Stuxnet, a name coined by researchers in the antivirus industry who discovered it two years ago. It infected a specific type of industrial controller at Iran’s uranium-

enrichment plant in Natanz, causing almost 1,000 centrifuges to spin out of control. The damage occurred gradually, over months, and Iranian officials initially thought it was the result of incompetence.

The scale of the espionage and sabotage effort “is proportionate to the problem that’s trying to be resolved,” the former intelligence official said, referring to the Iranian nuclear program. Although Stuxnet and Flame infections can be countered, “it doesn’t mean that other tools aren’t in play or performing effectively,” he said.

To develop these tools, the United States relies on two of its elite spy agencies. The NSA, known mainly for its electronic eavesdropping and code-breaking capabilities, has extensive expertise in developing malicious code that can be aimed at U.S. adversaries, including Iran. The CIA lacks the NSA’s sophistication in building malware but is deeply involved in the cyber-campaign.

The CIA’s Information Operations Center is second only to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center in size. The IOC, as it is known, performs an array of espionage functions, including extracting data from laptops seized in counter­terrorism raids. But the center specializes in computer penetrations that require closer contact with the target, such as using spies or unwitting contractors to spread a contagion via a thumb drive.

Both agencies analyze the intelligence obtained through malware such as Flame and have continued to develop new weapons even as recent attacks have been exposed.

Flame’s discovery shows the importance of mapping networks and collecting intelligence on targets as the prelude to an attack, especially in closed computer networks. Officials say gaining and keeping access to a network is 99 percent of the challenge.

“It is far more difficult to penetrate a network, learn about it, reside on it forever and extract information from it without being detected than it is to go in and stomp around inside the network causing damage,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former NSA director and CIA director who left office in 2009. He declined to discuss any operations he was involved with during his time in government.

Years in the making

The effort to delay Iran’s nuclear program using cyber-techniques began in the mid-2000s, during President George W. Bush’s second term. At that point it consisted mainly of gathering intelligence to identify potential targets and create tools to disrupt them. In 2008, the program went operational and shifted from military to CIA control, former officials said.

Despite their collaboration on developing the malicious code, the United States and Israel have not always coordinated their attacks. Israel’s April assaults on Iran’s Oil Ministry and oil-export facilities caused only minor disruptions. The episode led Iran to investigate and ultimately discover Flame.

“The virus penetrated some fields — one of them was the oil sector,” Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian military cyber official, told Iranian state radio in May. “Fortunately, we detected and controlled this single incident.”

Some U.S. intelligence officials were dismayed that Israel’s unilateral incursion led to the discovery of the virus, prompting counter­measures.

The disruptions led Iran to ask a Russian security firm and a Hungarian cyber-lab for help, according to U.S. and international officials familiar with the incident.

Last week, researchers with Kaspersky Lab, the Russian security firm, reported their conclusion that Flame — a name they came up with — was created by the same group or groups that built Stuxnet. Kaspersky declined to comment on whether it was approached by Iran.

“We are now 100 percent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a Boston-based senior researcher with Kaspersky Lab.

The firm also determined that the Flame malware predates Stuxnet. “It looks like the Flame platform was used as a kickstarter of sorts to get the Stuxnet project going,” Schouwenberg said.

US, EU fake Iran’s consent to discussing enrichment to fend off Israeli action

DEBKAfile Special Report

A spokesman for EU foreign executive Catherine Ashton, who heads the six-power group in nuclear negotiations with Iran, reported Monday night, June 11, that Tehran is now willing to discuss high-grade uranium enrichment in the next round of nuclear talks in Moscow on June 18-19.

The claim is false. Tehran consistently refuses to discuss its “right to enrichment” and threatened not to turn up for the Moscow session after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded last week that Iran come to the table with “concrete plans” for curbing uranium enrichment up to 20 percent purity.

Iran has not backtracked: Ashton got nothing new from an hour of tense conversation with senior negotiator Saeed Jalili and had to be satisfied with issuing the noncommittal statement, “The Iranians agreed on the need for Iran to engage on the (six powers') proposals, which address its concerns on the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program."

Enrichment remained unmentioned – least of all, any reference to the international inspectors’ discovery that Iran was enriching uranium up to 27 percent - and the “exclusively peaceful nature” of Iran’s nuclear program was endorsed.

From the outset, the talks between the six powers (US, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain) in Istanbul (April 14) and Baghdad (23.5) and Tehran were falsely presented by the US and the European Union as different from previous diplomacy in that Tehran was now prepared to discuss the controversial aspects of its nuclear program.

This sham presentation of Iran puts diplomacy on artificial life support. Admission of is demise would leave the powers face to face with the only remaining path, i.e., military action - to which President Barack Obama is committed if all other options failed - either by the United States or Israel with US support.

The International Atomic Energy Agency Director Yukiya Amano toed the line Monday, June 11, by denying that IAEA negotiations with Iran had broken down Friday, June 8, of IAEA on inspections of its suspect nuclear sites, particularly the Parchin military complex where nuclear-related explosives tests are believed to have been conducted.

It wasn’t the first time that Amano put a good face on a failure to get anywhere with Iran. On May 2, after coming away from a visit to Tehran empty-handed, he claimed a deal on inspections was clinched and close to signing. It never was. But the next day, the P5+1 were enabled to launch talks with Iran in Istanbul.

Still, Iran made sure that those talks got exactly nowhere. The next session in Baghdad was seriously stalled from the word go by a long-winded harangue by chief negotiator Jalili on the historical connotations of the 30-year old Khorrmanshahr battle, in which revolutionary Islamic Iran trounced Iraq although the world powers and Gulf states solidly backed Saddam Hussein.

Jalili did not mention Iran's nuclear program but, tacitly pointing at the delegations present, he commented: “The weapons that they provided to Saddam's Ba’athist regime included German Leopard tanks, British Chieftain tanks, French Exocet missiles and Super Etendard aircraft, Russian MIG fighter-planes and Scud-B missiles, German and British chemical weapons, American Sidewinder missiles and AWACS aircraft, Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Emirati dollars.

He concluded with a declaration that the Islamic republic would "never be bullied into surrendering" to “illegal and unjust demands.”

The tight lid kept on proceedings at the nuclear negotiations keeps embarrassing disclosures out of the public domain and supports the pretense of progress, when in fact Tehran has adamantly refused to open its nuclear program to real discussion.

Iran’s real attitude toward the current round of diplomacy is summed up by debkafile’s Iranian and intelligence sources in five points:

1. The US has run out of unilateral options for dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons program and depends now on the cooperation of Moscow and Beijing to achieve any progress. Tehran infers this from Washington’s turn to the Russians for help in resolving the Syrian crisis.

2. The world powers facing Iran at the nuclear negotiations in Istanbul and Baghdad are not united as depicted by the Obama administration but split three ways between Russia, China and the West. It is therefore in Tehran’s interest to keep the talks dragging on for as long as possible and so widen the divisions and isolate America.

3. Tehran is aware of US plans to impose harsher sanctions very soon, including an air and marine blockade, and is not dismayed. In fact, Iranian strategists are busy figuring out ways to get around them. They also calculate that the tougher the sanctions, the higher the price they will exact for every nuclear concession. From this perspective, tougher sanctions will buy Iran more time and a faster route to a nuclear bomb.

4. Tehran regards the staging of the "P7 Talks" as part of a wider picture. A high-ranking Iranian source said: ‘If the negotiations were just about nuclear issues, why bring in the major powers? The talks could have been handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Iran’s leaders are nonetheless capitalizing on those talks as a short cut to broad global recognition of the Islamic Republic’s status as a major world power.

“We are already more than half way to achieving this,” they say in Tehran.

5. In view of the first four points, Tehran believes it is on a winning roll and can afford to stand fast against giving ground on a single one of its nuclear and technological advances.

The question asked by debkafile is why is Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeping silent on this charade and even going along with it.

Iranian general: Our finger on war trigger

Enemies 'are all within range of the resistance fire'

By Reza Kahlili

With Western pressure growing on Bashar Assad over the latest massacres of defenseless women and children in Syria, Iranian officials again are warning the world against any action against the Middle East dictator.

The pro-Assad “resistance” has its finger on the trigger and the aggressors will not survive the conflict, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazaeri, told Mashregh, a media outlet run by the Guards. Iranian officials often refer to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as the resistance front.

Mashregh reported in March that Iran’s armed forces had formed a joint war room that included officers from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah for a coordinated military response to an attack on Syria.

“A conflict in Syria will engulf the region and its main victims will be the people of Syria themselves,” Jazaeri warned the protesters. “The Zionist regime and the interests of the enemies of Syria are all within range of the resistance fire.”

Citing a conspiracy to weaken the resistance front and that foreign hands were involved in the events in Syria, Jazaeri said, “At the right time, people of the region will retaliate against these actions. The defeat of the enemy at this stage will be a big event and, God willing, we will witness that.”

There have been several reports alluding to the Revolutionary Guards’ involvement in the Syrian suppression. Recently the deputy commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Cmdr. Esmail Ghani, said his forces have been playing a “physical and nonphysical” role in Syria.

The Guards last year called Syrian protesters “rabble-rousers” who are “puppets of Zionists and the United States” and that their chanting slogans against Iran and Hezbollah “will be their last stand.”

On Thursday, U.N. observers were fired upon as they tried to reach the site of the latest massacre of civilians, many of them women and children, who were shot or stabbed, the fourth such massacre in two weeks. More than 10,000 civilians have so far lost their lives in the brutal suppression ordered by Assad and abetted by Iran and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Basij militia made clear that Iran will not tolerate the fall of Assad.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for human rights abuses in Iran, told Lebanese TV Al Manar, “After the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and the disruption to their defensive posture in protecting the Zionist regime, America in order to defend the regime of the occupier of the Quds (Jerusalem) is after a new scenario in Syria. … But they will be defeated.”

The Basij commander warned Israel against any attack on Iran or Syria, stating, “Today all the people of the region are ready for wiping out this cancerous tumor, and reaction to any aggression will be the freedom of Quds.”

Naghdi also said the West was wrong in believing that international sanctions against Iran will force the Islamic republic to accept demands that it yield on its clandestine nuclear program.

“Sanctions have had a lot of effect on Iran, but one positive one is the growth of science and internal production. … If the American president did not have his hands in the blood of nations of the world, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, and had not embraced torture, we would have given him a national medal for his service to the Iranian nation for imposing sanctions.”

Naghdi predicted that America will be forced to pack up and leave the region, taking with it all of its forces.

The mullahs ruling Iran, based on centuries-old hadiths, believe that an attack on Syria and Iran and an ensuing counterattack on Israel will trigger the coming of “Mahdi,” the Shiites’ 12th imam and the last Islamic messiah. Both those events are looking increasingly likely as Assad continues to murder his own people and Iran continues its quest for nuclear weapons.

See a video on the situation:



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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and author of the award-winning book, “A Time to Betray.” He is a senior fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy. He also is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

Urgent Windows Update To Kill Off Spy Virus

Microsoft has carried out an emergency update of Windows after discovering that the makers of a spy virus had exploited a software bug.

The Flame espionage tool infected PCs across the Middle East by tricking computer security systems into accepting it as a genuine Windows product.

Mike Reavey, a senior director with Microsoft's security team, said the attacks were targeted and "highly sophisticated".

As a result of the bug fix, any viruses that bears the fake Microsoft code are likely to stop working.
Microsoft declined to comment on whether other viruses had exploited the same flaw in Windows, or whether the company was looking for similar bugs in the operating system.

Experts said the method had probably been used to deliver other viruses that have not yet been identified.

"It would be logical to assume that (the virus creators) would have used it somewhere else at the same time," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for security software maker F-Secure.

Flame has been in circulation since 2010 but because of its complexity was only discovered last week.

It was aimed primarily at Iran, but also affected Israeli and Palestinian territories, Sudan, Syria and Lebanon.

Researchers say that technical evidence suggests it was built on behalf of the same nation that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010.

Information about the virus is still being gathered by computer analysts.

‘Thunder’ will fall on Israel if it attacks Iran: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

By Farhad Pouladi / AFP

TEHRAN — Any attack by Israel on Iran will blow back on the Jewish state “like thunder,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Sunday.

Khamenei also said that the international community’s suspicion that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons is based on a “lie” and he insisted that sanctions imposed on his country were ineffective and only strengthened its resolve.

His speech, broadcast on state television to mark the 1989 death of his predecessor and founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, contained no sign Iran was prepared to make any concessions on its disputed nuclear program.

Instead, it was infused with defiance and Khamenei’s customary contempt for Iran’s arch-foes Israel and the United States.

If the Israelis “make any misstep or wrong action, it will fall on their heads like thunder,” Khamenei said.

The Jewish state, he added, was feeling “vulnerable” and “terrified” after losing deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as an ally.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Stockholm the threats against Israel were “nothing new,” insisting she would judge Tehran by its actions at upcoming nuclear talks in Russia.
“We look forward to what the Iranians actually bring to the table in Moscow,” she said.

“We want to see a diplomatic resolution. We now have an opportunity to achieve it, and we hope it is an opportunity that’s not lost, for everyone’s sake,” she said.

Allegations that Iran was trying to develop atomic bombs were false, Khamenei said on Sunday.

“International political circles and media talk about the danger of a nuclear Iran, that a nuclear Iran is dangerous. I say that they lie. They are deceiving,” Khamenei said.

“What they are afraid of — and should be afraid of — is not a nuclear but an Islamic Iran.”

He added: “They invoke the term ‘nuclear weapons’ based on a lie. They magnify and highlight the issue in their propaganda based on a lie. Their goal is to divert minds and public opinion from the (economic) events that are happening in the US and Europe.”

Western economic sanctions imposed to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program were having no effect, Khamenei insisted. Their only impact, he said, was “deepening hatred and animosity of the West in the hearts of the Iranian people.”

Khamenei called the stance by the United States and its Western allies “crazy.”

“The Iranian people have proved they can progress without the United States, and while being an enemy of the United States,” he said.

Western nations, the United States at the fore, accuse Iran of wanting to develop the capability to make nuclear weapons, something Khamenei has repeatedly denied. The supreme leader has called atomic arms “a great sin.”

Talks between the Islamic republic and the so-called P5+1 group of nations — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany — were revived this year and are to go to a crucial next round in Moscow on June 18-19.

But the United States and its ally Israel — the sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons state in the Middle East — have threatened military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails.

Khamenei’s speech was being closely watched by P5+1 officials for signs of what positions the Iranian delegation might take into the Moscow negotiations. The supreme leader has the final word on any decision on Iran’s nuclear activities.

At one point in his speech, Khamenei declared it “forbidden to stop on the path to progress, in the political sphere and in the sphere of science and technology.”

That carried the implication that Iran had no intention on scaling back its nuclear development.

Flame virus most powerful espionage tool ever, UN warns

The Flame virus is the most powerful espionage tool ever to target countries, a United Nations agency responsible for regulating the internet has warned.

By Damien McElroy

This is the most serious warning we have ever put out," said Marco Obiso, cyber security coordinator for the UN's Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union.

The formal warning will tell member nations that the Flame virus is a dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure, he said. "They should be on alert."

Orla Cox, a security analyst at the security firm Symantec, said that Flame was targeting specific individuals, apparently Iranian related. "The way it has been developed is unlike anything we've seen before," she said. "It's huge. It's like using an atomic weapon to crack a nut."

Figures released by the Kaspersky Lab show that infections by the programme were spread across the Middle East with 189 attacks in Iran, 98 incidents in the West Bank, 32 in Sudan and 30 in Syria.

Other countries where the virus was detected include Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.

"I think it is a much more serious threat than Stuxnet," Mr Obiso said.

Unlike the Stuxnet virus that was previously used to disrupt Iranian systems, Flame does not disrupt or terminate systems.

Iran, whose nuclear facilities and oil ministry have previously been the target of virus attacks, accuses the US and Israel of trying to sabotage its programme. It denies the allegation that its programme is weapons related.

A leading Israeli politician hinted at the country's involvement in the virus. Israel rejects Tehran's claims that its nuclear programme is designed to produce energy, not bombs. It considers Iran to be the greatest threat to its survival.

"Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it," Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio. "Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us."

Ehud Barak refuses to rule out military strike against Iran

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, refused to rule out military action against Iran yesterday, heightening expectations that his government is preparing to authorise an attack on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

By Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Barak said that sanctions and international diplomacy had so far failed to deter Iran from seeking to build a nuclear bomb, a prospect that would, he warned, threaten the stability of the "whole world".

"We strongly believe that sanctions are effective or could be effective if they are ... paralysing enough, that diplomacy could work if enough unity could be synchronised between the major players, but that no option should be removed from the table," he told the Andrew Marr Show.

The minister's comments come after a week of increasingly insistent claims in the Israeli press that Mr Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, his prime minister, are lobbying cabinet colleagues to support military strikes against Iran.

The two men, considered Israel's chief political hawks when it comes to Iran, are hoping that a report to be submitted by the UN's nuclear watchdog this week will provide justification for military action, observers and officials have suggested.

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency are expected to present the most compelling evidence yet that Iran is exploring ways to build a nuclear weapon, although European diplomats say the report will not amount to "a smoking gun".

Even so, the Israeli government will seize on its findings to urge the international community to take more decisive action.

The Netanyahu administration tasked Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, with mounting a diplomatic offensive over the weekend in the belief that his dovish credentials will make its case even more compelling.

In a series of interviews, Mr Peres warned that time was running out to prevent Iran from fulfilling its perceived nuclear ambitions and appeared to urge the international community to consider the military option.

"The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option," he told the Israel Hayom newspaper.

The key conclusions of the IAEA report will inevitably refocus international attention on Iran. It is expected to confirm that Iran has enough fissile material to build four nuclear bombs if it were further to enrich the uranium in its stockpiles. But it is an appendix, already partly leaked, that concentrates of the military aspect of Iran's nuclear programme which will garner most interest.

Satellite images will show a large steel container at the Parchin base near Tehran that appears to be designed for nuclear-related explosive testing.

Documentary evidence will also be provided to flesh out earlier IAEA suspicions that Iran is researching the construction of an atomic bomb trigger, has carried out computer simulations on building a nuclear device and is experimenting with the neutron technology needed to ignite a nuclear chain reaction.

The report is likely to conclude that Iran is researching how to construct a nuclear weapon but is not actively building one. Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the report was based on "counterfeit" claims.

As alarming as the findings are, European states are still likely to countenance against military action and call instead for a fifth round of sanctions.

"We gave imposed sanctions that continue to expand," Alain Juppe (ED: Acute on e please), the French foreign minister, said yesterday. "We can toughen them to put pressure on Iran. We will continue on this path because a military intervention could create a situation that completely destabilises the region."

Some observers have suggested that the bellicose rhetoric emerging from Israel is recent days is intended to alarm the international community into imposing tougher sanctions that it might otherwise ensue.

But there is also concern in the West that Israel could pursue unilateral military action.

US intelligence agencies have reportedly stepped up their monitoring of Israel to glean clues of a surprise attack after allegedly failing to win sufficiently concrete assurances from Mr Netanyahu that he would confer with Washington before taking military action.

Israeli intelligence has concluded that Iran intends to move the bulk of its nuclear production to a heavily fortified underground facility near the hold city of Qom by the end of the year, increasing the pressure to strike before it does so.

But Israel is thought only to have a window of only a few weeks if it wants to launch military action before the onset of winter, when heavy cloud would hamper aircraft targeting systems, making an attack impracticable. Some military experts predict that if an attack does come it will take place either in the spring, or, more likely, next summer.