Stuxnet knocks Natanz out for a week, hits Iran's air defense exercise
DEBKAfile Special Report November 24, 2010, 9:02 AM (GMT+02:00)
Despite Iranian claims in October that their nuclear systems were cleansed of the Stuxnet virus, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources confirm that the invasive malworm is still making trouble. It shut down uranium enrichment at Natanz for a week from Nov. 16 to 22 over breakdowns caused by mysterious power fluctuations in the operation of the centrifuge machines enriching uranium at Natanz.
The shutdown was reported by the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano to the IAEA board in Vienna on Tuesday, Nov. 23.
Rapid changes in the spinning speed of the thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium to weapons-grade can cause them to blow apart suddenly without the monitors detecting any malfunction. The Iranian operators first tried replacing the P1 and P2 centrifuges used at Natanz with the more advanced IR1 type, but got the same effect. They finally decided to shut the plant down until computer security experts purged it of the malworm.
But then, when work was resumed Monday, about 5,000 of the 8,000 machines were found to be out of commission and the remaining 2,500-3,000 partially on the blink.
Tuesday, Ali Akbar Salehi, Director of Iran's Nuclear Energy Commission tried to put a good face on the disaster. "Fortunately the nuclear Stuxnet virus has faced a dead end," he said. However, the IAEA report and Western intelligence confirm that the virus has gathered itself for a fresh onslaught on Iran's vital facilities.
According to an exclusive report reaching DEBKAfile, Stuxnet is also in the process of raiding Iran's military systems, sowing damage and disorder in its wake.
On Nov. 17, in the middle of a massive air defense exercise, Iranian military sources reported six foreign aircraft had intruded the airspace over the practice sites and were put to flight by Iranian fighters. The next day, a different set of military sources claimed a misunderstanding; there had been no intrusions. Iranian fighters had simulated an enemy raid which too had been repulsed.
DEBKAfile's military sources disclose there was no "misunderstanding." The foreign intruders had shown up on the exercise's radar screens, but when the fighter jets scrambled to intercept them, they found empty sky, meaning the radar instruments had lied.
The military command accordingly decided to give up on using the exercise as a stage for unveiling new and highly sophisticated weaponry, including a homemade radar system, for fear that they too may have been infected by the ubiquitous Stuxnet worm.
Washington spurns Tokyo's demand for reprisal against North Korea
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 23, 2010, 8:11 PM (GMT+02:00)
Washington roundly condemned the North Korean Nov. 23 artillery attack on the populated South Koreanislandof Yeonpyeong on the Yellow Sea border, calling on North Korea to halt its belligerent action and abide by the terms of the 1953 armistice agreement. But the Obama administration was clearly not about to meet Japanese pressure for joint military action in support of Seoul or reinforce its fighting forces on the peninsula – even as a deterrent. Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 soldiers and 3 civilians injured as the flames engulfed the targeted island.
A Pentagon spokesman also said it was too early to discuss redeploying US tactical nuclear arms to South Korea, a possibility raised by South Korea's Defense Minister Kim Tae-young Monday when North Korea's parade of its uranium enrichment and light water plants came to light.
The Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's second demand in his call to President Barak Obama after the North Korean attack was to convene an urgent UN Security Council meeting. That too went unheeded. The session France announced would take place Tuesday night was indefinitely postponed.
The Japanese prime minister maintained to Obama that North Korea must not be allowed to get away with two armed attacks on the South in the space of eight months without a military response. On March 26, North Korean torpedoes sunk the South Korean Cheonan cruiser. At least 46 seamen were lost.
DEBKAfile's military sources reports fears that if no penalty is exacted from Pyongyang for its belligerent behavior, it will be encouraged to continue striking South Korea.
Although it is pressing its advantage, issuing a terse warning that If South Korea intrudes into its territorial waters "even 0.001 millimeters, the revolutionary armed forces of [North Korea] will unhesitatingly continue taking merciless military counteractions against it."
The statement from the North's top military command was aired by state media.
South Korea "should bear in mind the solemn warning of the revolutionary armed forces that they do not make empty talk," it said.
DEBKAfile's military sources report that US Seventh Fleet headquarters at Yokosuka in Japan, together with the naval forces stationed there including the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. They have been covering South Korea's massive annual military exercises involving some 70,000 troops scheduled to last from Monday through Nov. 30.
Our sources add that closely in tune with Pyongyang, Tehran will be encouraged by the Obama administration's inaction against North Korea to greater pugnacity against Israel whose position in the Middle East Iran sees as akin to that of South Korea in the Far East. Both are regarded in Iran as tied hand and foot by Washington and therefore in no position to defend themselves without the US sayso.
Earlier, DEBKAfile report that Obama's lack of response to the Japanese call, despite the presence of 28,000 US troops on the Korean Demilitarized Zone border – even with limited military action - is bound to devalue the defensive umbrella against North Korea the US has pledged South Korea and Japan. US unresponsiveness is already resonating loudly in the Middle East and Persian Gulf which is beginning to take it as betokening feeble resolve in dealing with Iran and its nuclear weapons aspirations.
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