By Madison Ruppert: The fact that Israel is in one way or another involved with the
assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists is hardly debatable now that
U.S. officials have confirmed it, Israeli leaders have hinted at it, Israeli leaders have openly supported it and even relatively well known Americans have openly supported terrorism targeting the imaginary Iranian nuclear program.
In a new book released today, June 9, 2012, called Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars,
by CBS News correspondent Dan Raviv and Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman, a
somewhat different version was laid out which contradicts the anonymous
statements of U.S. officials mentioned above.
According to Raviv and Melman, the operations were not carried out by Mossad-trained MEK terrorists as was previously asserted.
Instead, they claim that the operations are far too sensitive and thus are restricted solely to Israeli operatives.
“They [the Israelis] don’t farm out a mission that is that
sensitive,” Raviv said. Raviv alleges that these operations are so
sensitive that they actually require the Prime Minister of Israel,
Benjamin Netanyahu, to personally sign off on them.
“They might use dissidents for assistance or logistics
but not the hit itself. The methodology and training and use of
motorcycles is all out of the Mossad playbook. They wouldn’t trust
anybody else to do it,” he added in an interview with Fox News.
When studying the attacks on various Iranian individuals, it quickly becomes apparent that the use of motorcycles crop up in almost every instance.
Raviv said that the skilled use of motorcycles is considered their
hallmark and that Mossad agents “excel at accurate shooting at any speed
and staying steady to shoot and to place exquisitely shaped sticky
bombs.”
In the book Raviv and Melman also state that the cyberwarfare
campaign (which one must assume includes the wide range of attacks
including Stuxnet, the malware known as Duqu which apparently was a derivative of Stuxnet and the recently discovered, incredibly complex and powerful Flame)
against the Iranian nuclear program was not, in fact, an American
invention as some have claimed, but instead hat it was a purely Israeli
innovation.
They allege that the program was created by the Israeli military
intelligence agency AMAN and the Israeli equivalent of the U.S.’s
National Security Agency (NSA) called Unit 8200. The authors say that the program was then endorsed by the White House at Israel’s request.
According to Melman, the Israeli covert warfare program in Iran has been successful in disrupting the Iranian nuclear program.
He states that Israel believes that they are encouraging people from
avoiding the field of nuclear science by taking out the key Iranian
scholars in the field.
However, Iranian officials claim that the Israeli killing of Iranian scientists only serves to encourage more students to pursue the field.
According to a report from January of this year, the Iranian Minister
of Science Research and Technology, Kamran Daneshjo, over one thousand
students changed their majors in order to study nuclear physics and
engineering after one of the country’s top scientists was killed.
The evidence for Israel’s confidence in this matter is unclear.
The authors also point out that this is far from an innovative
strategy for Israel. Indeed, Israel has engaged in terrorism – or what
they might call “covert killing of scientists” – for quite a while now.
Operations similar to the current ones in Iran occurred in Egypt
during the early sixties targeting German scientists who were allegedly
trying to help then-president Gamal Abed al-Nasser to build nuclear
weapons as well as Iraq in the 1980s.
Of course, Israel has also engaged in overt, unilateral military campaigns like the one against Syria in 2007 – known as Operation Orchard – which targeted an alleged nuclear reactor (which some researchers have concluded was actually a textile factory).
However, it appears that this campaign spans much more ground than
previous ones since it also involves an incredibly advanced – some might
say peerless – cyberwarfare effort targeting the Iranian nuclear
program as well.
While previously they have engaged in both overt and covert warfare
in an attempt to stop their perceived foes, they are now engaging in
similar tactics while also engaging in cyberwarfare as well.
Interestingly, Melman claims that the Flame program was built first
by the Israelis working with the NSA. Melman said that Flame was
designed to “suck information
about the (uranium-enriching) centrifuges and how they operate,”
although that is precisely what Duqu was designed to do as well.
Melman claimed that after the U.S. and Israeli experts obtained information
via Flame they were able to build Stuxnet. One problem inherent in this
reasoning is the fact that Flame is still (or was recently) present in
Iranian systems.
If it was just a precursor to Stuxnet, why would they leave Flame on any of the systems?
For those interested in a new take on Israel’s program I think this
book might be an exciting read. These are the same authors behind
another well known work on Israeli intelligence, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to say just how accurate the reporting
of Raviv and Melman really is since it is contradicted by other reports
from anonymous officials. I suggest my readers consume all the information they can get their hands on while maintaining a healthy degree of skepticism when assessing any and all potential sources.
No comments:
Post a Comment