CONFIRMED: Israel's 2007 Air Strike in Syrian Desert Destroyed Nuclear Reactor

Initially thought by many to be some sort of a weapons cache, the IAEA had noted in the past that the facility did resemble a clandestine Syrian nuclear reactor project. Now the rest of the world has come to realize a stark reality that had long been suspected in intelligence circles, and that Israel deduced over four years ago...

Operation Orchard was a 2007 airstrike conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) upon a covert Syrian nuclear site in the Deir ez-Zor desert region of Syria. In the wake of the attack, the Bush Administration and CIA confirmed the site was a "military target", while Damascus of course denied it. But it soon came to the fore that the now-incinerated site was actually nuclear in nature... and that the Norks were involved somehow as well. 

before                                           after

The well-orchestrated IDF raid was executed with precision by the Israeli Air Force's 69th Squadron utilizing F-15Is/F-16Is with auxiliary drop-off fuel tanks and armed with 500lb bombs and Maverick missiles, all supported by an ELINT electronic intelligence aircraft.

A unit of elite Shaldag commandos were already on the ground at the Syrian desert site the day before, deployed to lay a kiss-o-death laser beam right on the target, marking it for destruction from above. Other reports had the Sayeret Matkal special-forces -where current PM Benjamin Netanyahu once led- also involved.

Later, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation in 2008 reported evidence of "significant" traces uranium as well as control-rod graphite, while noting numerous features indicative of an undeclared nuclear reactor. 

But as we came to expect from Mohammed ElBarradei -long a man of dubious principle, competence, and loyalties- his largely ineffective UN agency still somehow failed to confirm or deny the nature of the site, claiming that Syria "failed to provide necessary cooperation with the IAEA investigation".

Syria purported that they "had no nuclear secrets to hide". Back and forth they went, as with preceding/ongoing IAEA charades in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Now at at long last they are officially stating that the site that Israel reduced to rubble was in-fact an unfinished nuclear reactor. Earlier this year, photos released by a Washington, DC think tank betrayed a second covert nuclear site in Syria as well.

The Israelis steadfastly asserted that the project was built with North Korean help, but as with Saddam's reactor destroyed in 1983, tiny Israel somehow has saved us all from yet another heinous dictator armed with nuclear weapons... and again, to world condemnation. That's OK, they're used to such ingratitude and strategic ignorance amongst their myriad international critics.

I guess they better get rested-up for Iran- going to be a long night.

IAEA   BBC   AlJazeera   Wikipedia   Wall St Jounal

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Stuxnet Virus Driving Iranian Nuclear Program Right Into the Ground

Stuxnet 'running wild' at vital Bashehr and Nanantz facilities... may be all but unstoppable

Fox News:

Iran's nuclear program is still in chaos despite its leaders' adamant claim that they have contained the computer worm that attacked their facilities, cybersecurity experts in the United States and Europe say. 

The American and European experts say their security websites, which deal with the computer worm known as Stuxnet, continue to be swamped with traffic from Tehran and other places in the Islamic Republic, an indication that the worm continues to infect the computers at Iran's two nuclear sites. 

The Stuxnet worm, named after initials found in its code, is the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever created. Examination of the worm shows it was a cybermissile designed to penetrate advanced security systems. It was equipped with a warhead that targeted and took over the controls of the centrifuge systems at Iran’s uranium processing center in Natanz, and it had a second warhead that targeted the massive turbine at the nuclear reactor in Bashehr. Stuxnet was designed to take over the control systems and evade detection, and it apparently was very successful. 

Last week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after months of denials, admitted that the worm had penetrated Iran's nuclear sites, but he said it was detected and controlled. 

The second part of that claim, experts say, doesn’t ring true. Eric Byres, a computer expert who has studied the worm, said his site was hit with a surge in traffic from Iran, meaning that efforts to get the two nuclear plants to function normally have failed. 

The web traffic, he says, shows Iran still hasn’t come to grips with the complexity of the malware that appears to be still infecting the systems at both Bashehr and Natanz. “The effort has been stunning," Byres said. 

"Two years ago American users on my site outnumbered Iranians by 100 to 1. Today we are close to a majority of Iranian users.” He said that while there may be some individual computer owners from Iran looking for information about the virus, it was unlikely that they were responsible for the vast majority of the inquiries because the worm targeted only the two nuclear sites and did no damage to the thousands of other computers it infiltrated. 

At one of the larger American web companies offering advice on how to eliminate the worm, traffic from Iran has swamped that of its largest user: the United States. “Our traffic from Iran has really spiked”...

Ralph Langner, the German expert who was among the first to study and raise alarms about Stuxnet, said he was not surprised by the development. “The Iranians don’t have the depth of knowledge to handle the worm or understand its complexity,” he said, raising the possibility that they may never succeed in eliminating it. 

“Here is their problem. They should throw out every personal computer involved with the nuclear program and start over, but they can’t do that. Moreover, they are completely dependent on outside companies for the construction and maintenance of their nuclear facilities. They should throw out their computers as well. But they can’t,“ he explained. “They will just continually re-infect themselves.” 

“With the best of expertise and equipment it would take another year for the plants to function normally again because it is so hard to get the worm out. It even hides in the back-up systems. But they can’t do it,” he said. 

And Iran’s anti-worm effort may have had another setback. In Tehran, men on motorcycles attacked two leading nuclear scientists on their way to work. Using magnetic bombs, the motorcyclists pulled alongside their cars and attached the devices. One scientist was wounded and the other killed. Confirmed reports say that the murdered scientist was in charge of dealing with the Stuxnet virus at the nuclear plants...

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WikiLeaks: North Korea Shipped 19 Advanced Nuclear-Capable Missiles to Tehran

Berlin and Moscow now within range 
of the vile, apocalyptic Iranian regime...

Most defense experts had heard of individual advanced missile components supplied to Tehran by Pyongyang- but entire nuclear-capable North Korean missiles complete with their massive boosters are a bit of a shocker... and how did they get them there, anyway?

Alas, the BM-25's were indeed serendipitously sent, and are already in Iran... where they are being studied, improved, while the technologies are applied to their space program and ongoing development of an ICBM that can reach the US mainland. 

They immediately increase the range Iran's arsenal to 2000 miles from the previous 1200 max...

Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show. 

Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year...

The missiles could for the first time give Iran the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe or easily reach Moscow, and American officials warned that their advanced propulsion could speed Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

There has been scattered but persistent speculation on the topic since 2006, when fragmentary reports surfaced that North Korea might have sold Iran missiles based on a Russian design called the R-27, once used aboard Soviet submarines to carry nuclear warheads. In the unclassified world, many arms control experts concluded that isolated components made their way to Iran, but there has been little support for the idea that complete missiles, with their huge thrusters, had been secretly shipped. 

The Feb. 24 cable, which is among those obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, makes it clear that American intelligence agencies believe that the complete shipment indeed took place, and that Iran is taking pains to master the technology in an attempt to build a new generation of missiles. 

The missile intelligence also suggests far deeper military — and perhaps nuclear — cooperation between North Korea and Iran than was previously known. At the request of the Obama administration, The New York Times has agreed not to publish the text of the cable.

Interestingly, two important Iranian nuclear engineers driving to work this morning had bombs attached to their car by motorcycle-mounted assassins while in motion... one dead, one wounded.  

Oh well, that's a dangerous business they chose... -here-
(h/t Weasel Zippers)

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Sophisticated CIA and/or Israeli Cyber Attack on Iran Already Well Underway...?

Stuxnet is believed to be the most destructive virus ever devised for attacking major industrial complexes, reactors and infrastructure... and it's hitting Tehran hard

The Islamic Republic of Iran looks to be in the midst of a major ongoing cyber attack upon it's most vital computer systems by the unprecedentedly menacing Stuxnet virus... including nuclear  reactors and other sensitive facilities:

Mahmoud Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran's industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that 30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled by the malicious Stuxnet virus. 

This followed DEBKAfile's exclusive report Thursday, Sept. 23, from its Washington and defense sources that a clandestine cyber war is being fought against Iran by the United States with elite cyber war units established by Israel. Stuxnet is believed to be the most destructive virus ever devised for attacking major industrial complexes, reactors and infrastructure. 

The experts say it is beyond the capabilities of private or individual hackers and could have been produced by a high-tech state like America or Israel, or its military cyber specialists. The Iranian official said Stuxnet had been designed to strike the industrial control systems in Iran manufactured by the German Siemens and transfer classified data abroad. 

The head of the Pentagon's cyber war department, Vice Adm. Bernard McCullough said Thursday, Sept. 22, that Stuxnet had capabilities never seen before. In a briefing to the Armed Forces Committee of US Congress, he testified that it was regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated piece of Malware to date. 

According to Alyaee, the virus began attacking Iranian industrial systems two months ago. He had no doubt that Iran was the victim of a cyber attack which its anti-terror computer experts had so far failed to fight. Stuxnet is powerful enough to change an entire environment, he said without elaborating. 

Not only has it taken control of automatic industrial systems, but has raided them for classified information and transferred the date abroad. This was the first time an Iranian official has explained how the United States and Israel intelligence agencies have been able to keep pace step by step of progress made in Iran's nuclear program. Until now, Tehran attributed the leaks to Western spies using Iranian double agents...

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Leaks by American security sources to US media referred to the recruitment by Israel military and security agencies of cyber raiders with the technical knowhow and mental toughness for operating in difficult and hazardous circumstances, such as assignments for stealing or destroying enemy technology, according to one report.

DEBKAfile's sources disclose that Israel has had special elite units carrying out such assignments for some time. Three years ago, for instance, cyber raiders played a role in the destruction of the plutonium reactor North Korea was building at A-Zur in northern Syria.

Some computer security specialists reported speculated that the virus was devised specifically to target part of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, either the Bushehr nuclear plant activated last month - which has not been confirmed - or the centrifuge facility in Natanz.

DEBKAfile's sources add: Since August, American and UN nuclear watchdog sources have been reporting a slowdown in Iran's enrichment processing due to technical problems which have knocked out a large number of centrifuges and which its nuclear technicians have been unable to repair. It is estimated that at Natanz alone, 3,000 centrifuges have been idled...

About time we started employing our nation's dramatic technological advantages over these medieval savages... why we wouldn't throw all we got at 'em is beyond me. At minimum, buys us time until we are forced to go with John Bolton's more traditional approach...

More today in an exclusive report at DebkaFile

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What is Putin Thinking?

"How can I handle this situation in a way that most benefits Vladimir Putin?"- that's what he's thinking.

Of course, the insecure, vengeful, and paranoid ex-KGB clique that runs Russia today will use any opportunity to gain advantage and/or poke America in the eye. Over the last few years, we've all seen how they behaved once they got a few bucks. But many are now wondering -as the obstructionism continues (Jihad Watch)- how on earth did Putin arrive at the conclusion -as his current actions suggest- that an unstable, apocolyptic regime in Tehran with nuclear weapons is a good thing? 


Telling us that there's no need to "frighten" Iran -Putin made clear yesterday that he's nowhere near ready for the kind of sanctions Barack Obama was hoping for. This comes at a point where another 6-12 mos of circular arguments and disingenuous foot-dragging is really all that's needed by the apocolyptic loons in Tehran. 


So it now appears to many that the Kremlin is prepared to live with -or even welcomes- a nuclear-armed Iran. James Lewis at the American Thinker thinks that Putin has accepted it, and sees an incredible recklessness in the Kremlin's midwifing of an Iranian Bomb-

...What he is really hoping is that (a) Russia will get more influence and control in the Middle East by driving the Americans back, using Tehran as a proxy; (b) the inevitable nuclear arms race between Sunni Arabs and a new Persian Nuclear Caliphate will allow Russia to coordinate oil prices with OPEC, so as to raise add more gold to its coffers.

Both of those calculations are wild gambles, putting vast numbers of human lives on the line. Putin is letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle...

Putin's cover for the Tehran nuke program may be the biggest strategic mistake in history, bar none. In the next two years it will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that wiser heads have been desperately trying to prevent.

Now while Hillary purports that Russia "wasn't asked" to help with Iran, Prairie Pundit tells us that in-reality Russian FM Sergey Lavrov provided an icy reception to the idea of sanctions. Judged against the official Kremlin positition as opposed to an Iranian Bomb, "the Russian position is not supportable by common-sense or facts." 

Putin is surely loving this position of ME influence- all he had to do to get here was sell nuclear technology to the Iranians at great profit, then obstruct the world's efforts to avoid the apocalypse that he made possible. 

But the perception of Vladimir Putin as shrewd, clever, and calculating doesn't seem to dovetail with Russian aquiescense to an Iranian nuclear weapon. 

One is left searching for the logic applied at this decisive moment- has he truly decided that an Iranian bomb is somehow in his and Russia's interest ... and that Israel can't -or won't- handle the problem?

In a potentially key development, we learn that Russian allegiance might have it's limits after-all. DEBKA (via Israpundit) claims that Putin is suspending the sale of much-needed S-300 AA missile batteries to Tehran- leaving them exposed to Israeli attack, while selling their rivals in Saudi Arabia the yet-more advanced S-400 system. 


And this being the same Saudis who have reportedly already greenlighted an IAF attack on Iran.This abrupt and surprising U-turn does not fit-in with the Russia's otherwise supportive posture re. Iran- and is likely representative of cynical Kremlin opportunism, as was the plan all-along. 


Putin is unprincipled, aggressive, ruthless, and very calculating- but not crazy. In their eyes, the serial Machiavellians in the Kremlin have already written the entire script... and it goes like this: the Russians will milk all sides for whatever they can get -especially the strategically and diplomatically clueless Obama. 


In the end, they know Israel will not let the threat get too far along. Regardless of their ceaseless bluster, the Iranians know this too; morale in their armed forces as war approaches is reported to be in precipitous decline. Israel now plans to attack after the first of the year- and is actively preparing for a larger ME war with Iran's allies/terrorist proxies to ensue, as predicted here last December. 


In the meantime, the Kremlin will be pulling-the-strings as pressure and worry builds on all sides... a situation they will continue to exploit to maximum Russian advantage. In the end... the Iranians will need to back-down or face-the-consequences... as the Kremlin pulls-out the rug at the last minute. 


And if they then refuse, Tehran will be left to handle the Israeli Air Force without advanced Russian AA technology, as we now know- and in the ensuing confilct, the IDF will wipe-the-floor with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the rump Hamas. Unlike limited engagements like southern Lebanon in 2006, the Israelis will fight to win, and win big- with infantry and armor from day one. 


Putin has now showed his hand in withdrawing the sale of S-300 AA batteries- so the Iranians -who haven't left themselves much of an out- will need to decide their fate by the end of this year, or Israel will seal it. Such a humiliating defeat will surely renew anti-government sentiment, hopefully completing the democratization process began earlier this year in Tehran... as Barack Obama turns the United States into an irrelevant, impotent bystander. 

◆ Memeorandum 

◆ Jihad Watch 

◆ DEBKA

◆ Israpundit

◆ American Thinker

◆ Prarie Pundit

◆ putitinthought

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Sunday 2-Funnies

-click any to enlarge-

-thanks as always to Pookie's Toons-

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