Israel Matzav

Avner Cohen on Stuxnet

On Monday, Middle East news coverage was given over to the story reported in the New York Times – and subsequently picked up by The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian – that Israel and the United States had coordinated in developing the Stuxnet computer worm, now said to have possibly delayed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme for another four years. The implication in all the articles was that an Israeli military strike on Iran was no longer an imminent event. (Just Journalism analysed the UK media coverage of the New York Times story here.)

Cited as an authority in the original article was Dr. Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and the author of The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, a new history of Israel’s undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear weapons programme. Cohen told the press that from what he could tell, and from what his sources had told him, Israel had indeed had a role in constructing and testing Stuxnet.

Just Journalism spoke with Dr. Cohen over email to further elaborate on the Israel-Stuxnet connection.

Labels: Dimona nuclear reactor, Iranian nuclear program, Natanz, Stuxnet

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:20 PM