The Shadow War
December 13th, 2010

Via: Newsweek:

Historically, Israel’s covert operations have been on the violent side. When it comes to strategic murders, the Mossad has established a record 50 years long of “targeted assassinations,” often taking out scientists who tried to help its enemies develop weapons of mass destruction. It has carried out hits all over the Middle East and Europe (see following story). Iran knows this history well: Israeli intelligence sources, who decline to be named on the record, coyly suggest that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are so convinced the Mossad directed the assassination plots that the Guards are taking extreme measures to protect the man considered next on the hit list: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a professor of nuclear physics whom the Israelis sometimes call “the Iranian Dr. Strangelove.” They believe he’s directing a secret nuclear-weapons program that is distinct from the public enrichment operations at Natanz and elsewhere, which are open to United Nations inspectors. (The official Iranian government position is that all its nuclear research and all its uranium enrichment are for purely peaceful purposes.)

The real damage to the Iranian nuclear program, however, was done by Stuxnet—the most sophisticated computer worm ever detected and analyzed, one targeting hardware as well as software, and a paradigm of covert cyberweapons to come. “Stuxnet is the start of a new era,” says Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency. “It’s the first time we’ve actually seen a weapon created by a state to achieve a goal that you would otherwise have used multiple cruise missiles to achieve.”