Stuxnet Allegedly Loaded By Iranian Double Agents 167
First time accepted submitter rainbo writes "According to a report from ISSSource, a saboteur who was likely a member of an Iranian dissident group loaded the Stuxnet virus on to a flash drive and infected machines at the Natanz nuclear facility. Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said that an unspecified amount of 'nuclear spies' were arrested on ties to this attack. Some officials believe these spies belonged to Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is used as the assassination arm of the Israeli Mossad."
No matter who it was (Score:4, Interesting)
No matter who was responsible, they pushed the world closer to war with that virus.
I'm not convinced by what we've seen so far, what little evidence there is, that Iran is producing nuclear weapons or wants to. Even if you could prove that to me, it wouldn't change my position that we shouldn't be involved in their affairs and have no right to punish or sanction a nation for doing the same thing we do. It's the US after all with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the only nation to have ever used them (we get sort of a pass since they were unprecedented at the time).
Iran is a sovereign nation and if they wish to produce nuclear weapons because they feel threatened by their neighbors (Israel, a nuclear power) or as a deterrent then that is their prerogative. Israel claims to feel threatened and vulnerable, that they're being menaced by Iran, yet they're the ones murdering scientists and sabotaging industries of other nations.
Re:from the who's-to-blame dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer to this question will become obvious if Iran gets nukes. If Iran goes nuclear, expect a number of Middle East countries to start taking steps to acquire nuclear weapons themselves, as a deterent to a nuclear Iran. These will be the same counties that didn't have an issue with not having nuclear weapons when Isreal was the only country in the region to have them.
Re:from the who's-to-blame dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
And when was the last time Iran attacked some other country?
Iranian agents regular attack people around the world, such as in Argentina: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_AMIA_bombing [wikipedia.org]
Iran has cannon fodder to do their dirty work (like Hizbullah).
and civilians killed in the process are no problem
In Iran's case, civilians killed in the process is the desired result.
Re:from the who's-to-blame dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Their cities are under a near-constant rocket barrage"
I'll agree it sucks that Hamas lobs rockets in to Israel, no argument. But they are largely crude and ineffective weapons and they get even more so as the expensive, American funded, antimissile systems are deployed.
You know what probably sucks even worse. Living in Gaza in a walled ghetto with disturbing similarities to the ghettos Jews were forced to live in in Europe before and during World War II. It really sucks to live in a heavily populated urban area where Israel chokes off the most basic supplies and nearly all economic activity so people survive largely on the trickle of supplies from the tunnels. Where Isreale is draining 1.5 million people of all hope of having a life that doesn't suck. It also sucks when Israels military uses tanks, F-16's and attack helicopters to target Gaza because they are vastly more effective at killing people than the crummy rockets Hamas lobs in to Israel.
I don't condone shooting rockets in to Israel but I do understand how the miserable, desperate people in Gaza would want to strike back in such a totally futile way at the people who've been manning the walls of their ghetto for the last half century, even though its largely ineffective and invites periodic retaliation on the people of Gaza that is usually several orders of magnitude more deadly.
"has not only not expanded it's borders through military might"
Only if you choose to pretend that the permenent occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights isn't expanding Israel's borders. You might make that case were it not for the massive settlement activity in which Israel is seeking to make the West bank and East Jerusalem a part of Israel in contravention of international law which forbids an occupier from settling in occupied territories. Either Isreal needs to withdraw from the occupied territories or fully annex them in to Israel and give Arabs full citizenship. Permenent occupation, with illegal settlements is purely abusive on the part of Israel.
Israel is only a "democratically-elected government" because they are actively disenfranchising Arabs. If you count all the disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and East Jerusalem who are under permanent occupation Arabs are fairly close to become a majority. I think the Arab population is growing faster than Jewish so its a near inevitability that Israel will eventually be a true apartheid state with a Jewish minority electing a government that dominates a largely disenfranchised Arab majority.
Listen, I know there are a lot of level headed, forward thinking moderate Jews living in Israel, I follow some of their blogs and on Twitter. But the fact is people like Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are extremists, they dominate the current government's rhetoric, thinking and agenda, and they seem to go out of their way to provoke confrontation after confrontation. They give Israel a bad name and they put Israel in the pretty similar class to Saudi Arabia and Iran as far as the fanaticism and oppression goes.
Re:from the who's-to-blame dept. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and Abbas claimed any peace deal with Israel was only interim until they were powerful enough to take over. When Israel turned Gaza over the Palestinian Authority, the missiles from Gaza soon followed. The Palestinians couldn't even run a strip of ground peacefully without using it to attack Israel. This only confirmed what Israel thinks of the Palestinians in general, i.e., they are incapable of running a peaceful state that is not dedicated to Israel's destruction.
There's no whitewashing the fact that Muslims hate Jews; the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a Gruppenfuhrer in the Third Reich. He raised his own SS division in the Balkans from Bosnian muslims and rather thought Hitler should get on with job of wiping out the Jews. He also wanted the Third Reich to set up shop in the Middle East, ovens and all. Arafat was his nephew. He idolized the Grand Mufti.