The idea of a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities has been discussed in Israel since the early 2000s. However, the US and EU countries didn’t approve such measure, and Israel wasn’t eager to launch a strike without international support.
Moreover, Tel-Aviv understood the risk. In case of failure, Iran would have a legitimated reason for declaring war against the Jewish state. In this potential war Syria and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas would participate.
By the mid 2000s Israeli experts came to the conclusion that a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities should be launched and bring them out of operation for a long time… but without any military campaign.
How?
The answer was clear: today, when all equipments, including equipment of Iranian nuclear facilities, are working due to computer programs, the strike should be launched on computers. A computer virus, which destroys “the electronic brain” of a nuclear reactor, could lead to a catastrophe more powerful than in Chernobyl.
However, the Iranian scientists were not so stupid to plug the computers controlling enrichment of uranium to Internet.
All these computers were working autonomously. Of course, sometimes information was downloaded to them, but sources of information were strictly checked for viruses’ existence. Thus, there must be created such a virus, which wouldn’t be detected by all anti-virus programs of the world and would reach certain computers in the Iranian nuclear facilities.
In summer 2010 the computers controlling centrifuges for enrichment uranium were infected by a virus. These centrifuges began to break down one by one, while the connecting system between computers failed. All efforts taken by some Belarusian company, which serviced these computers, in detecting and destroying the virus led to nothing.
It was the greatest moral and material strike on the Iranian nuclear program, which threw it away for a couple of years.
Soon the major anti-virus company Symantec began to study the new virus, or “a computer worm.” Its experts defined that this was a virus of the new generation, but it was created by the well-known program Malware (Malicious Software). The virus successfully absconded as a common fail of the Iranian state company; it didn’t show itself in a PC, but always worm to any portable media during downloading information from the computer infecting next one. And only inside of the operation system of major computers in industrial facilities the worm Stuxnet revived and brought chaos to the computer’s work. It led to braking equipment, while an operator didn’t notice anything strange, as data of his control box said everything was alright.
Symantec stated that such virus could be created only by 5-15 top computer geniuses. They also named the countries, where such geniuses lived – Israel, Germany, and the US. Trying to define the source of Stuxnet, Symantec noticed that one of components of the worm is called Myrtus, which is “adassa” in Hebrew. Adassa, according to Bible, is a real name of Esther, a Jew who married the Persian tzar Artaxerxes and prevented total destruction of hew peoples. The hint is clear.
The second hint was found in the number 19790509, which was the name of the other component of the worm. On May 9th, 1979, Khaviva Elkanian was murdered, who was the leader of Jewish community of Iran and the firs Jew murdered by the regime of Khomeini.
Thus, the Israeli special services were suspected of creating the virus. However, it was much more difficult.
Stuxnet began to be created in 2008, when the Germany company Siemens addressed to the National Computer Laboratory of the USA in Idaho and asked it to help in creating a reliable security system for super-computers of Siemens. Americans accepted the order and later realized that the same computers controlled the Iranian centrifuges for uranium enrichment. They invited Israeli colleagues, who began to study peculiarities of the super-computer and create the virus.
After tests of Stuxnet had been completed, Mossad decided that it was time to launch the virus, and the success of the sabotage was incredible.
On November 20th, 2010, official Tehran stated that Stuxnet was completely destroyed, and all facilities previously infected by it were working normally. However, in spring 2011 Stuxnet appeared again together with a new virus of the same type with a banal name Stars. It appeared that Stuxnet could transform and “fall into a sleep.”
When Stuxnet stopped work of Iranian centrifuges, it was not only the beginning of a new era in rivalry between Iran and Israel. Stuxnet meant that the world stepped into a new epoch of cybernetic wars, when the work of major industrial facilities can be paralyzed without shooting. Humanity is vulnerable due to using computers in all spheres of life.
As for continuing confrontation between Iran and Israel, it is obvious that its result will depend on special services of these states. Nobody can predict who will be the winner in this battle.
Petr Lukimson, Israel
