Israel Matzav

Buying time with Iran

David Ignatius reviews the results of the various sabotage efforts against Iran.

Officials won't discuss the clandestine program of cyberattack and other sabotage being waged against the Iranian nuclear program. Yet we see the effects - in crashing centrifuges and reduced operations of the Iranian enrichment facility at Natanz - but don't understand the causes. That's the way covert action is supposed to work.

The most direct confirmation that sabotage has paid off came from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said in November that the Stuxnet computer virus had damaged the Natanz operation. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," he said.

A fascinating (and remarkably detailed) account of the Stuxnet attack was published Dec. 22 by the Institute for Science and International Security. The study described how the virus was targeted to attack a key electronic control in the centrifuges, known as a "frequency converter," so that the spin of the rotors was increased and slowed in a way that would cause a malfunction.

According to the ISIS report, the virus may have been introduced in early or mid 2009. By late 2009 or early 2010, the study said, Iran decommissioned and replaced about 1,000 centrifuges - far more than normal breakage. The virus hid its electronic tracks, but an analysis by the security firm Symantec showed that the code included the term "DEADFOO7," which could refer to the aviation term for a dead engine and also be a play on James Bond's fictional code name.

Stuxnet was just one of what appeared to have been a series of efforts to disrupt the supply chain of the Iranian nuclear program. "Such overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge program," concluded the ISIS.

The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials estimate that if Iran were to try a "break out" by enriching uranium at Natanz to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, that move (requiring reconfiguration of the centrifuges) would be detectable - and it would take Iran one to two more years to make a bomb.

Read the whole thing.

Those who are in the know aren't talking about who's behind the sabotage against Iran's nuclear program. The result is that the Left is able to portray the sabotage, along with the much more visible sanctions, as an Obama administration effort to avoid war, while not even taking into account the possibility likelihood that Israel wishes to avoid war. In fact, at the moment, it appears far more likely that Israel would go after Iran as an offshoot of a war with Hezbullah than that it would go after Iran as an opening strike. And that's a good thing, because I cannot see Iran allowing Hezbullah to go to war to Israel if it means Iran will be attacked.

In any event, the sabotage has clearly bought some time, and possibly a regime change in Washington to an administration that is more willing for the US to do the job rather than Israel. Eventually, Iran will have to be stopped - whether by regime change or militarily or both.

Labels: Hezbullah, Iranian nuclear program, sabotage, Stuxnet

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:34 PM