Tag Archives: covert operations Iran

A War Like No Other: the Covert Invasion of Iran

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Within hours of Iran proudly announcing the launch of its latest centrifuges, on April 10, 2021, a power blackout damaged some of the precious machines at its site in Natanz…One thing reports seem to agree on is that an “incident” affected the power distribution network at Natanz.

Natanz is critical to Iran’s nuclear program. The heavily secured site is protected by anti-aircraft guns and has two large centrifuge halls buried more than 50 feet underground to protect them from airstrikes. Despite the conflicting reports, it appears the facility’s main power distribution equipment — Natanz has its own grid — was taken out with explosives. Backup emergency electricity also was taken down, and power cut out across the multibuilding compound, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesperson for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told Iran’s state-run TV.

A blackout may not sound that serious, but it can be at an enrichment plant. Centrifuges are slender machines linked up in what are called cascades which enrich uranium gas by spinning it at incredibly high speeds using rotors. The stress on the advanced materials involved is intense and the process is technically immensely challenging. A small problem can send a centrifuge spinning out of control, with parts smashing into each other and damaging a whole cascade.

The question is: what caused the blackout – a cyber-attack or a physical act of sabotage, like a bomb?

Israel has a long history of sabotaging nuclear facilities in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, both through cyber means — including the sophisticated Stuxnet attack against Iran, which Israel conducted with U.S. and Dutch intelligence agencies — and with conventional bombs and explosives. Israel is also reportedly behind a number of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials over the last decade. The Stuxnet attack was particularly significant because it launched the era of cyberwarfare, as it was the first cyberattack known to use a digital weapon that could leap into the physical realm to cause actual destruction of equipment. The highly skilled covert operation was conducted in lieu of a kinetic attack to avoid attribution and an escalation in hostilities with Iran; it remained undetected for three years..

Excerpts from Gordon Corera, Iran nuclear attack: Mystery surrounds nuclear sabotage at Natanz, BBC, Apr. 12, 2021, Kim Zetter, Israel may have Destroyed Iran Centrifuges Simply by Cutting Power, Intercept, Apr. 13, 2021

By Hook or By Crook (or Both): How Iran Beats US Sanctions

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Persian Gulf waters off Iraq have become a new, important waypoint for Iranian oil smugglers looking to avoid U.S. sanctions…Iranian tankers now regularly transfer crude to other ships just miles offshore the major Iraqi port of Al Faw, according to the officials. The oil is then mixed with cargoes from other places to disguise its origin, and it eventually ends up on sale in world markets, they say.


In one example from March 2020,  according to a shipping manifest reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, 230,000 barrels of oil from the state-run National Iranian Oil Co. were transferred to a vessel moored in Iraqi waters. The cargo was blended with Iraqi oil and passed to other ships, according to people familiar with the operation. The ultimate destination of the oil wasn’t clear.

The people familiar with the transfer said the operation was part of an increasingly common and lucrative business that involves transferring and mixing cargoes with other vessels multiple times and then selling the oil with documents that declare it is as Iraqi. Iraqi oil can be sold at a significant premium to oil of Iranian origin.

Iran has increasingly tried to find ways to get its crude to market despite the U.S. sanctions. Iran’s daily crude and condensates exports averaged 827,000 barrels a day in the first six months of this year, according to U.S. shipping-information company TankerTrackers.com. That is up 28% from the previous six months, but far below the level of 2.7 million barrels a day in May 2018 before the sanctions.

“We While some of Iran’s oil exports go to countries not aligned with the U.S., such as Syria and China, they often pass through allies such as the United Arab Emirates or Iraq, where their origin is being concealed, according to U.S. officials.

Excerpt from Sarah McFarlane and Benoit Faucon, Iraq Emerges as Hurdle to Enforcing Iran Oil Sanctions, WSJ, Oct. 24, 2020

Spreading the War Bug

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Foreign Policy reported recently that key officials within the Trump administration are “pushing to broaden the war in Syria, viewing it as an opportunity to confront Iran and its proxy forces on the ground there”. The strategy was being advocated over objections from the Pentagon, but it doesn’t seem to be deterring the White House.  As the Washington Post made clear just a few days ago, Iranian and US forces have already been directly clashing in the region, and officials are busy planning the “next stage” of the Syria war once Isis is defeated – a plan that centers around directly attacking the Iranians….

Just this weekend, Politico quoted key Republican senator Tom Cotton saying: “The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran.” The CIA has already expanded its Iranian covert operations, while the main White House liaison to intelligence agencies, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, has reportedly“told other administration officials that he wants to use American spies to help oust the Iranian government”. And US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, in little noticed comments to Congress last week, called for “regime change” in Iran as well (albeit a “peaceful” one – whatever that means)…

The Trump administration’s plans may not stop in Syria either. Some officials have allegedly also been pushing for the Pentagon to step up its support of Saudi Arabia’s appalling war in Yemen, which has left 20 million people on the verge of starvation – all to go after Iranian-backed forces in the region as well.

All this comes as the Trump administration ramps up war across the Middle East. They are conducting drone strikes at a rate almost four times that of the Obama administration; civilian deaths from US forces in Syria have skyrocketed; special operations in Somalia have been ramping up; and the Pentagon is sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan.

Excerpt from: Trevor Timm, Trump administration Donald Trump’s bloodlust for war in the Middle East risks chaos, Guardian, June 27, 2017

Covert Operations in Iran

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Washington believed that covert action against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be more effective and less risky than an all-out war… In fact, Mark Fitzpatrick, former deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation said: “Industrial sabotage is a way to stop the programme, without military action, without fingerprints on the operation, and really, it is ideal, if it works.”The US has a long history of covert operations in Iran, beginning in 1953 with the CIA orchestrated coup d’état that toppled the popularly elected Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and installed a dictator, Reza Shah. The US has reorganised its covert operations after the collapse of the shah in 1979…

In January 2011, it was revealed that the Stuxnet cyber-attack, an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme, has been accelerated since President Barack Obama first took office. Referring to comments made by the head of Mossad, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton confirmed the damages inflicted on Iran’s nuclear programme have been achieved through a combination of “sabotage and sanctions”.

Meanwhile, several Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated. The New York Times reported that Mossad orchestrated the killings while Iran claimed the attacks were part of a covert campaign by the US, UK and Israel to sabotage its nuclear programme….

There are at least 10 major repercussions arising from the US, West and Israeli policy of launching covert war and cyber-attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities and scientists.

First, cyber war is a violation of international law. According to the UN Charter, the use of force is allowed only with the approval of the UN Security Council in self-defence and in response to an attack by another country. A Nato-commissioned international group of researchers, concluded that the 2009 Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities constituted “an act of force”, noting that the cyber-attack has been a violation of international law.Second, the US covert operations are a serious violation of the Algiers Accord. The 1981 Algiers Accords agreed upon between Iran and the US clearly stated that “it is and from now on will be the policy of the US not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs”.

Third, the cyber war has propelled Tehran to become more determined in its nuclear efforts and has made major advancement. According to reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), prior to covert operations targeting the nuclear programme, Iran had one uranium enrichment site, a pilot plant of 164 centrifuges enriching uranium at a level of 3.5 per cent, first generation of centrifuges and approximately 100 kg stockpile of enriched uranium.Today, it has two enrichment sites with roughly 12,000 centrifuges, can enrich uranium up to 20 per cent, possesses a new generation of centrifuges and has amassed a stockpile of more than 8,000kg of enriched uranium.

Fourth, the strategy pursued has constituted a declaration of war on Iran, and a first strike. Stuxnet cyber-attack did cause harm to Iran’s nuclear programme, therefore it can be considered the first unattributed act of war against Iran, a dangerous prelude toward a broader war.

Fifth… [s]uch short-sighted policies thicken the wall of mistrust, further complicating US-Iran rapprochement and confidence-building measures.

Sixth, Iran would consider taking retaliatory measures by launching cyber-counter-attacks against facilities in Israel, the West and specifically the US…

Seventh, Iran is building a formidable domestic capacity countering and responding to western cyber-warfare. Following the Stuxnet attack, Iran’s Supreme Leader issued a directive to establish Iran’s cyber army that is both offensive and defensive. Today, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has the fourth biggest cyber army in the world. Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) acknowledged that IRGC is one of the most advanced nations in the field of cyberspace warfare.

Eighth, Iran now has concluded that information gathered by IAEA inspectors has been used to create computer viruses, facilitate sabotage against its nuclear programme and the assassinations of nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear energy chief stated that the UN nuclear watchdog [IAEA] has been infiltrated by “terrorists and saboteurs.” Such conclusions have not only discredited the UN Nuclear Watchdog but have pushed Iran to limit its technical and legal cooperation with the IAEA to address outstanding concerns and questions.

Ninth, worsening Iranians siege mentality by covert actions and violations of the country’s territorial sovereignty could strengthen the radicals in Tehran to double down on acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran could be pondering now the reality that the US is not waging a covert war on North Korea (because it possesses a nuclear bomb), Muammar Gaddafi lost his grip on power in Libya after ceding his nuclear programme, and Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded (because they had no nuclear weapon).

Tenth, the combination of cyber-attacks, industrial sabotage and assassination of scientists has turned public opinion within Iran against western interference within the country…[P]rovocative western measures have convinced the Iranian government that the main issue is not the nuclear programme but rather regime change.

Excerpts from  Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Ten consequences of US covert war against Iran, Gulf News, May 11, 2013

The US Campaigns of Attrition: Iran, Iraq

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There is another…theory, that Iran will persist in its drive to achieve a bomb—or at least a break-out capacity to get one quickly if it so desired. The Iranians say they never trusted Mr Obama’s offer of detente early in his presidency because of the heavier sanctions and the campaigns of sabotage and assassination that accompanied the offer. In the same vein,they deplore the American administration’s recent decision to drop its longstanding classification of the exiled People’s Mujahedeen of Iran as a terrorist organisation.

So Iran’s rulers will not easily trust future pledges to lift sanctions in return for nuclear concessions. In any event, Iran’s leaders may now believe that such concessions would destroy the Islamic Republic’s credibility and open it to a recurrence of the unrest that followed Mr Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009. So it is possible that an American policy of containment, even an undeclared one, might lead to a long campaign of attrition of the kind that impoverished Iraq in the 1990s, while leaving its leader in power.

Anticipating trouble, Iran’s hardliners have been stifling the remaining repositories of dissent as fiercely as ever. The most notable of these is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an establishment heavyweight and former president who became an opposition figurehead after the contentious poll of 2009. The two most controversial of his five children—his daughter Faezeh and his son Mehdi—have recently been arrested, undoubtedly with the approval of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Mr Rafsanjani had been expected to put up a fight when Mr Khamenei tries, as he probably will, to install his own nominee as president in elections that are due next spring. But with his children behind bars, the former president may favour circumspection over principle.

Excerpt, Iran: Behind the rants, uncertainty grows, Economist, Sept. 29,2012, at 54