BKNT--Israeli Basing OPTION for Iran Strike thrusts Azerbaijan into the Spotlight

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION  

US//1; ATTN:

The Diplomat Talk of allowing its airstrips to be used in a military strike against Iran thrust Azerbaijan into the spotlight. It doesn’t want to be there.

RELATED:

• Why Israel Won’t Go It Alone
• Israel’s Iran Debate Takes New Turn
• India’s Misunderstood Israel Policy
• Arms Race on the Caspian?
• Will Iran Lash Out at Weak Israel?

A new and perhaps surprising country took center stage recently in the ongoing row over Iran’s nuclear program – Azerbaijan. Citing anonymous “high-level sources” from U.S. diplomatic and intelligence circles, a controversial article in Foreign Policy at the end of March suggested the possibility that Israel might have been proffered the use of Azerbaijani airstrips for any strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The article attracted impassioned rebuttals from officials and observers alike. But the question remains: how did Azerbaijan get sucked into the controversy over Tehran’s nuclear plans in the first place?

Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel developed in earnest 20 years ago, and have grown significantly in depth and scope ever since. With bilateral trade currently hovering around $4 billion, Azerbaijan is Israel’s top trading partner among Muslim states, and the second largest source of Israel’s oil after Russia.

Conversely, Israel represents Azerbaijan’s second largest oil customer, and via the Ashkelon-Eilat Trans-Israel Pipeline, a crucial transit point for Azeri oil flowing to Asia’s growing markets. Israeli companies have also made no secret of their stake in the country’s other key, non-energy sectors, including agriculture and communications. However, it’s the military-defense aspect of bilateral cooperation that has kept Iran on its toes of late.

Israel began modernizing Azerbaijan’s ragtag army after its six year, undeclared war with Armenia led to the loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and seven neighboring districts. On February 26 of this year, Baku and Tel Aviv inked the latest in a series of arms deals, this time to the tune of $1.6 billion, on the basis of which Israel Aerospace Industries would supply Heron and Searcher drones, anti-aircraft and missile defense systems over the coming months and perhaps years.

This closeness represents everything that relations between Iran and Azerbaijan ought to have been right from the start, given both nations’ deep historical ties. Azerbaijan was a Persian satrapy under the Achaemenid, the Parthian and the Sassanian empires, and the Shiite Safavids credited for laying the foundations of modern Iran were mainly ethnic Azeris, a sub-branch of the Turkic peoples. Only after Iran was twice defeated by the Russians in the 19th century was it obliged to renounce the half of the Azeri homeland located north of the river Araxes.

This disjuncture largely stems from the overwhelming secularism brought on by 71 years of Soviet rule (1920-1991) and Azerbaijan’s palpably pro-West, pan-Turkic and anti-Iranian outlook, especially under former President Abulfaz Elçibey and his Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, a factor that prompted Iran to support Christian Armenia during the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

South of the Araxes, Tehran remains acutely sensitive to potential Azeri irredentism stoked by the existence of independent Azerbaijan, despite the fact that its own Azeris – a fifth to a quarter of all Iranians including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (who is half-Azeri) – are generally well integrated. 

Baku has for its part accused Iran of supporting radical Shiite elements, including the now outlawed Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, as well as the Talysh ethnic minority inhabiting the border areas. Nationalist rhetoric has also sharpened with calls for the country to be rechristened “North Azerbaijan” as opposed to what some view as the “occupied” South.

Both Israel and Iran have repeatedly accused each other of using Azeri territory as a base for covert operations, and the Azeri authorities haven’t held back from publicly linking a number of locally arrested individuals with Iranian intelligence.

All this suggests that an Israeli “staging ground” may not be that farfetched, despite a 2005 Baku-Tehran non-aggression pact and official insistence – most recently by President Ilham Aliyev during a cabinet meeting – that Azerbaijan would never allow its territory to be used against its neighbors.

However, while Azerbaijan is eminently suited to Israeli interests, the costs of a potential Iranian backlash toward Baku are unbearable for three key reasons.
First, Azerbaijan suffers from the tyranny of proximity, with 611 kilometers of porous common border on Iran’s northwestern doorstep. Geographically, Azerbaijan’s capital and much of its population and energy infrastructure are concentrated in the flatlands just beyond the Talysh mountains and Iran’s formidable but not impassable Alborz range. Baku is located less than 200 kilometers from Parsabad in Iran as the crow flies, and little more than 300 kilometers from the border along an axis suitable for the projection of ground forces.

Iran’s relatively modest naval and aerial could incapacitate Azerbaijan’s critical energy infrastructure – the country’s lifeline – before being neutralized. Priority targets might include various pipelines or the crucial Sangachal terminal. Indeed, the fact that the entire pipeline corridor lies underground may give Tehran greater incentive to target the terminal instead.

Second, Azerbaijan’s geopolitical environment and the region’s interlocking energy interests greatly raise the costs of a long-distance military alliance targeting an immediate neighbor. The BTC and BTE pipelines were designed to traverse Georgia and Turkey, two of Azerbaijan’s closest regional allies. In Georgia’s case, a third, Baku-Supsa pipeline also begins at Sangachal terminal.

This makes Turkey the key transit point on the East-West energy corridor leading onwards to European markets. However, since it also heavily relies on Caspian hydrocarbon imports and earns an estimated $200 million per annum on BTC transit fees alone, Ankara has little interest in having Azerbaijan invite retaliation on its energy sector.

Moscow, the region’s preeminent power, continues to view the Caspian basin and the south Caucasus as part of its Soviet-era sphere of influence and is therefore wary of any development that might further diminish its toehold. A direct Israel-Iran faceoff would almost certainly draw the U.S. military into the fray. But the consequences could be worse for Baku if proof of complicity leaks out. And, pipeline routing disputes aside, all five Caspian littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan – share an obvious interest in ensuring energy stability.

Given what’s at stake, Baku has been careful about pursuing an independent but “balanced foreign policy” with its neighbors. Geography, after all, is immutable, unlike long-distance alliances.

Third, Azerbaijan’s leaders have been consistently clear about their top national priority, which is the “restoration of territorial integrity.” According to the 2007 National Security Concept, Armenia’s ongoing occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts represents the “major determinant of the country’s security environment and…a key factor in the formulation of the National Security Policy.” 

Baku’s military buildup and defense pacts should therefore be regarded chiefly through this prism, with Iran being relevant at this level only insofar as it supports Yerevan.


Given the geopolitical constraints, frequent official references to “shared strategic interests” between Tel Aviv and Baku are in all likelihood restricted to the former’s energy security and the latter’s defense posturing vis-à-vis Armenia, even if both governments clearly benefit from containing Iran. What’s more, Baku essentially views its Israeli relations as a means of cementing patronage from the West and in particular Washington. 

Azeri officials have been frank about the role of the Israeli lobby in counteracting the influence of the Armenian lobby in Azerbaijan’s favor. This paid dividends when President George W. Bush eventually waived Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act, which stipulated assistance to the 15 former Soviet republics barring Azerbaijan (because of its conflict with Armenia).

While the Azeri national security concept also prizes “integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures,” some of Baku’s positions within the Islamic world and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – such as recognition of a Palestinian state – and the mere absence of an embassy in Israel after twenty years of diplomatic relations corroborate this balancing act.

Above and beyond all this, though, the simple fact that a potential Israeli staging ground in Azerbaijan is no longer a secret puts this quite out of the question. The “leak” conveyed in the article may have served its purpose if, according to former U.S. diplomat John Bolton, it was indeed “part of the [Obama] administration’s campaign against an Israeli attack.”

At the end of the day, while the Azeris can ill-afford to be part of an Israeli strike on Iran, Baku may still tolerate some degree of covert activity as long as Azeri national interests aren’t mortgaged as collateral. This would be of little consolation to Israeli strategists if not for parallel listening posts widely believed to exist in Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkmenistan and even elsewhere in coordination with the United States.

But more importantly, this also means that a conflict with Iran may be much less likely to spread to the strategically sensitive Caspian region. Or at least, not by way of the “northern” Azeris.

Kevjn Lim is an independent writer and a contributing analyst with Open Briefing: the Civil Society Intelligence Agency. CONTINUE Reading Full Story HERE...

http://the-diplomat.com/2012/05/12/israel%E2%80%99s-reluctant-friend/

Double Life of a CIA Agent inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran:

Israel, Iran Eye Baku

By Nima Khorrami Assl

The Diplomat - December 28, 2011

Religious, cultural, and historical links notwithstanding, the Republic of Azerbaijan has had a difficult relationship with neighboring Iran ever since its independence in 1991. But tensions have reached new heights in the last couple of year years. 

This was no clearer than it was on August 9 this year, when Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of Iran’s armed forces’ Joint Staff Command, warned Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev that he would face “a dark fate” should he continue to expand ties with Israel.

The statement prompted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to deliver an official protest to the Iranian Embassy in Baku, as well as to arrest three members of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, which Baku claims is funded by Tehran. Last month, meanwhile, Baku accused Iran of being behind the stabbing of Azeri writer and journalist Rafiq Tagi. And last week, the director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting office in the Azeri capital, Ahmad Kazemi, was denied entry into Baku, and was forced to leave Azerbaijan the same day.

Tehran has for its part accused Baku of fomenting divisions within its large Azeri population, which is estimated to number between 20 to 25 million, with the majority residing in northwestern Iran. On August 13, Tabnak, an Iranian news website, revealed what it called an “Azerbaijani plot” to foster ethnic conflict in Iran’s northwestern provinces, including the dissemination of anti-Iranian programs by Azerbaijani TV and radio stations. Equally alarming for the authorities in Iran is the decision by the Aliyev government to include several Iranian provinces, including Ardabil, Qazvin and Hamedan, as parts of a “Greater Azerbaijan Republic” in school textbooks.

Compounding Iranian fears is Israel’s key role in Azerbaijan’s energy and defense sectors. Iran is deeply concerned over growing Israeli and Western investments in the Azerbaijani energy sector, seeing such developments as a major threat to its own economic interests. Unable to compete with and/or attract Israeli and Western technology and capital for tapping abundant Caspian natural resources, Iran has resorted to a policy of intimidation in order to discourage foreign investment in the Azerbaijan offshore sector. Tehran’s efforts in this are greatly enhanced by the fact that maritime disputes between the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea remain unresolved, allowing Iranian gunboats to make several incursions into what the Azerbaijani government considers as its territorial waters.

This comes at a time when Tehran is nervously watching the expanding military and intelligence cooperation in the region. Surrounded by U.S. troops in the south, east, and west, Iranian officials tend to perceive the deepening military ties between Jerusalem and Baku as the latest element in a Western plan to completely encircle Tehran. Ultimately, Iran views Israel’s effort to develop a military industrial complex in Azerbaijan as a long-term plan to open up a new front for a possible military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities should the need arise.

The problem for Baku is that, strategically speaking, it’s impossible for Azerbaijan to forgo its ties with one of these countries in favor of the other. The recent Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, as well as the Azeri elites’ concern over the perceived “Islamization” push by Ankara, are of particular concern for Baku, and it’s these two developments more than anything that have added extra value to Azeri-Israeli relations. This was underscored in a January 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan, which said that President Aliyev was uncomfortable with the pro-Islamic and pro-Palestinian stance of Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

But Iran is no ordinary country for Azerbaijani strategists. The two states share a 600 kilometer land border, while an estimated 85 percent of Azerbaijan’s population is Shiite. These two realities allow Iran the potential to cause real trouble for authorities in Azerbaijan and provide it considerable opportunities to destabilize the country. Certainly, there have been reports that Iran has an active religious network operating in Azerbaijan that it could utilize to undermine the Aliyev government.

Azerbaijan is fully aware of Tehran’s capacity for mischief making and so has refrained from crossing Tehran’s “red lines,” including by deciding against opening an embassy in Jerusalem.  But this is unlikely to be enough to prevent ties between the two countries entering a period of even more heightened tension, not least because the Tehran-Tel Aviv rivalry for influence over Azerbaijan is intensifying by the day.

Iran and Israel have been playing a cat-and-mouse game in Azerbaijan for more than a decade, one that utilizes the businesses, diplomats, citizens and spies both countries have in Azerbaijan. With growing regional uncertainty, there’s now an extra incentive for both Tehran and Jerusalem to continue building on their already well-established networks in Baku. How the Aliyev government – stuck in the middle – will respond, remains to be seen.

Nima Khorrami Assl is a security analyst at Transnational Crisis Project, London. His work has appeared in The Guardian and Foreign Policy Journal, among other publications.  CONTINUE Reading Full Story HERE...

http://the-diplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2011/12/28/israel-iran-eye-baku/

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

FLASH--CyBER-BlackSEC- BBC - Web War II: What a future cyberwar will look like

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

Magazine

FLASH-CyBER-BlackSEC 

CyberIntelligenceNETWORK; US/1; ATTN: ALL

The first episode of the three part documentary series Danger in the Download presented by Ed Butler will be broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday 1 May at 00:06GMT and will be available afterwards on i-player.

30 April 2012 Last updated at 04:21 ET 

By Michael Gallagher BBC World Service

 

How might the blitzkrieg of the future arrive? By air strike? An invading army? In a terrorist's suitcase? In fact it could be coming down the line to a computer near you.

Operation Locked Shields, an international military exercise held last month, was not exactly your usual game of soldiers. It involves no loud bangs or bullets, no tanks, aircraft or camouflage face-paint. Its troops rarely even left their control room, deep within a high security military base in Estonia. 

These people represent a new kind of combatant - the cyber warrior. 

One team of IT specialists taking part in Locked Shields, were detailed to attack nine other teams, located all over Europe. At their terminals in the Nato Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, they cooked up viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other internet attacks, to hijack and extract data from the computers of their pretend enemies. 

The idea was to learn valuable lessons in how to forestall such attacks on military and commercial networks. The cyber threat is one that the Western alliance is taking seriously. 

It's no coincidence that Nato established its defence centre in Estonia. In 2007, the country's banking, media and government websites were bombarded with Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks over a three week period, in what's since become known as Web War I. The culprits are thought to have been pro-Russian hacktivists, angered by the removal of a Soviet-era statue from the centre of the capital, Tallinn. 

DDOS attacks are quite straightforward. Networks of thousands of infected computers, known as botnets, simultaneously access the target website, which is overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and so temporarily disabled. However, DDOS attacks are a mere blunderbuss by comparison with the latest digital weapons. Today, the fear is that Web War II - if and when it comes - could inflict physical damage, leading to massive disruption and even death.

"Sophisticated cyber attackers could do things like derail trains across the country," says Richard A Clarke, an adviser on counter-terrorism and cyber-security to presidents Clinton and Bush. 

"They could cause power blackouts - not just by shutting off the power but by permanently damaging generators that would take months to replace. They could do things like cause [oil or gas] pipelines to explode. They could ground aircraft." 

Clarke's worries are fuelled by the current tendency to put more of our lives online, and indeed, they appear to be borne out by experiments carried out in the United States.

At the heart of the problem are the interfaces between the digital and physical worlds known as Scada - or Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition - systems.

Today, these computerised controllers have taken over a myriad jobs once performed manually. They do everything from opening the valves on pipelines to monitoring traffic signals. Soon, they'll become commonplace in the home, controlling smart appliances like central heating.

And crucially, they use cyberspace to communicate with their masters, taking commands on what to do next, and reporting any problems back. Hack into these networks, and in theory you have control of national electricity grids, water supplies, distribution systems for manufacturers or supermarkets, and other critical infrastructure. 

In 2007, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demonstrated the potential vulnerability of Scada systems. Using malicious software to feed in the wrong commands, they attacked a large diesel generator. Film of the experiment shows the machine shaking violently before black smoke engulfs the screen. 

Although this took place under laboratory conditions, with the attackers given free rein to do their worst, the fear is that, one day, a belligerent state, terrorists, or even recreational hackers, might do the same in the real world. 

"Over the past several months we've seen a variety of things," says Jenny Mena of the DHS. "There are now search engines that make it possible to find those devices that are vulnerable to an attack through the internet. In addition we've seen an increased interest in this area in the hacker and hacktivist community."

One reason why Scada systems may be prone to hacking is that engineers, rather than specialist programmers, are often likely to have designed their software. They are expert in their field, says German security consultant Ralph Langner, but not in cyber defence. "At some point they learned how to develop software," he adds, "but you can't compare them to professional software developers who probably spent a decade learning." 

Moreover, critical infrastructure software can be surprisingly exposed. A power station, for example, might have less anti-virus protection than the average laptop. And when vulnerabilities are detected, it can be impossible to repair them immediately with a software patch. "It requires you to re-boot," Langner points out. "And a power plant has to run 24-7, with only a yearly power-down for maintenance." So until the power station has its annual stoppage, new software cannot be installed. 

Langner is well-qualified to comment. In 2010 he, along with two employees, took it upon himself to investigate a mystery computer worm known as Stuxnet, that was puzzling the big anti-virus companies. What he discovered took his breath away.

Stuxnet appeared to target a specific type of Scada system doing a specific job, and it did little damage to any other applications it infected. It was clever enough to find its way from computer to computer, searching out its prey.

And, containing over 15,000 lines of computer code, it exploited no fewer than four previously undiscovered software errors in Microsoft Windows. Such errors are extremely rare, suggesting that Stuxnet's creators were highly expert and very well-resourced. 

It took Langner some six months to probe just a quarter of the virus. "If I'd wanted to do all of it I might have gone bust!" he jokes. But his research had already drawn startling results. 

Stuxnet's target, it turned out, was the system controlling uranium centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. There is now widespread speculation that the attack was the work of American or Israeli agents, or both. Whatever the truth, Langner estimates that it delayed Iran's nuclear project by around two years - no less than any air strike was expected to achieve - at a relatively small cost of around $10 million. This success, he says, means cyber weapons are here to stay. 

Optimists say Stuxnet does at least suggest a scrap of reassurance. Professor Peter Sommer, an international expert in cyber crime, points out that the amount of research and highly skilled programming it involved would put weapons of this calibre beyond anyone but an advanced nation state. And states, he point out, usually behave rationally, thus ruling out indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets. 

"You don't necessarily want to cause total disruption. Because the results are likely to be unforeseen and uncontrollable. In other words, although one can conceive of attacks that might bring down the world financial system or bring down the internet, why would one want to do that? You would end up with something not that different from a nuclear winter."

But even this crumb of comfort is denied by Langner, who argues that, having now infected computers worldwide, Stuxnet's code is available to anyone clever enough to adapt it, including terrorists.

"The attack vectors and exploits used by Stuxnet - they can be copied and re-used reliably against completely different targets. Until a year ago no one was aware of such an aggressive and sophisticated threat. With Stuxnet that has changed. It is on the table. The technology is out there on the internet."

One thing is for sure, he adds: If cyber weapons do become widespread, their targets will lie mostly in the west, rather than in countries like Iran, which have relatively little internet dependence. This means that the old rules of military deterrence which favoured powerful, technologically advanced countries like the United States do not apply: Responding in kind to a cyber attack could be effectively impossible. 

This asymmetry is likely to grow, as developed countries become ever more internet-dependent. So far, the Internet Protocol format allows only 4.3 billion IP addresses, most of which have now been used. But this year, a new version is rolling out, providing an inexhaustible supply of addresses and so allowing exponential growth in connectivity. Expect to see far more machines than people online in the future. 

In the home, fridges will automatically replenish themselves by talking to food suppliers; ovens and heating systems will respond to commands from your smartphone. Cars may even drive themselves, sharing GPS data to find the best routes. For industry, commerce and infrastructure, there will be even more reliance on cyber networks that critics claim are potentially vulnerable to intrusion. 

"There will be practically infinite number of IP addresses," says former hacker Jason Moon. "Everything can have an IP address. And everything will have one. Now, that's great. But think what that's going to do for the hacker!" 

In fact, it has already become a challenge for even sensitive installations, let alone households, to remain offline. Although military and other critical networks are supposedly isolated from the public internet, attackers can target their contractors and suppliers, who plug into the "air-gapped" system at various times. Somewhere down the food chain, a vulnerable website or a rogue email will provide a way in.

According to Richard Clarke, the mighty American armed forces themselves are not immune, since their command & control, supplies, and even some weapons systems, also rely on digital systems.

"The US military ran headlong into the cyber age," he says. "And we became very dependent on cyber devices without thinking it through. Without thinking that if someone got control of our software, what would we be able to do? Do we have backup systems? Can we go back to the old days?"

The answer it seems is no. A new form of weapon appears to be emerging. And the world may have to learn to adapt.

The first episode of the three part documentary series Danger in the Download presented by Ed Butler will be broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday 1 May at 00:06GMT and will be available afterwards on i-player.

_________________________________________________________________________

BBC © 2012 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17868789?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin&goback=.gde_4217323_member_111669576

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

I/Cy-WAR - SWG(A)--New US F-22 Stealth Fighters Now at Iran's Back Door / Cyber Attcks on Iran's Science Ministry

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

Meanwhile, back on the…ON THE IRANIAN FRONT...

Prev.Refs.:

BKNT--LAYING With FIRE, Part - #2 --Fla. Rev. T. JONES TELCON w/CG John ALLEN, C/ISAF & USFOR-A : Let the QUORAN Burn Countdown Begin--LD-e/C

[ed.note: 21st Century Miranda-zade (Farsi for son-of) rights have been rendered, for what remains of the dignity, if not soveignty, of the Persopolian/Persian Empire. Anybody miss the Shah?

As noted in an earlier missive, Sic Semper Iranis…?

Gen. William ODOM, one of the few true players to accurately predict the collapse of the Soviet Union (and on-the-record at that),* once argued to me, during the Fall of 1988, that even with the detritus of the Iran/contra scandal, the twenty-five years of stability proffered under the Shah’s dictatorial rule was worth it.

We are now entering our 34^th year under Revolutionary Guard and Mullah RULE. At what price for the next twenty-five?

Just about every March, almost like clockwork (since 2006 – ck), sometime BKNT Member P-Sy HERSH has predicted/revealed SpecOPS, and tribal training, etc., in Iran. He was accurate on most of those occasions--some contemptuously confirmed by your herein affiant (US/1)--but the Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis and Russians apparently hadn’t signed off with the Israelis until late last year.

Go figure.

So, fasten your parachute fighter-straps; and sit on your helmut…] 

(* - Hai, Fukuyama-san?)

BKNT--PLAYING With FIRE, Part - #2 --Fla. Rev. T. JONES TELCON w/CG John ALLEN, C/ISAF & USFOR-A : Let the QUORAN Burn Countdown Begin--LD-e/C

According the inimitable Eric Husher, a retired intelligence analyst who chased SCUDs during Desert Storm, ran itnelligence collections operations in the Balkans and is today prolific contributor on various online private intelligence discussion groups,

“Yes, the subject of Azerbaijan has come up in a previous discussion, based around a rumor that Azerbaijan would allow Israeli warplanes to use an airbase to conduct their strikes in Iran (which was assessed as a fairly ludicrous proposition). Yes, there is a lot of Israeli influence in Azerbaijan, and they are investing in a drone manufacturing plant there, but that isn't the same as allowing warplanes to use an airfield, and nobody in Azerbaijan wants to face off against a very angry Iranian Army...," Husher recently wrote.

"That said, 'ignoring' Israeli agents passing over the Azerbaijan border into Iran is quite conceivable, and it is certainly well known that the Iranians have any number of agents lurking in Azerbaijan, along with Russians, Americans, Turks, Georgians and who knows who else (from all the tales I have heard lately, Baku sounds a lot like Vienna during the Cold War). In such a circumstance, the likelihood of Israel pulling off anything so 'non-clandestine' as a warplane 'pit-stop' by a squadron or two in Azerbaijan and keeping it quiet approaches the zero-point..."

But if certain policy changes have been initiated secretly, as several BlackNET Members are reporting, then there can be little doubt the Law of intended consequences will likely set-in, counter-intuitively-wise?

According to intelligence and Special Forces sources, Azerbaijan has indeed agreed to provide a covert fighter landing base to the state of Israel, along with search and rescue helicopter support, despite all the public proclamations from officials in the U.S. Israel and Azerbaijan.

The key element in this unfolding operation, one source said, has not even been mentioned in even the most public of official denunciations and denials. "The Russians," this senior intelligence "consumer" said Friday. The have agreed to 'play neutral'--to remain neutral militarily."'

And the one country with the most to lose should the Law of unintended consequences go into effect? The Georgian Republic--practically the birth-place of unintended consequences in this Century. 

Various break-away Georgian Provinces are the Russian Bear's expected quid-pro-quot for secretly signing off on the planned Israeli air-strikes, a second, though now retired, senior intelligence official source postulated Friday.

 [The BlackNET will have much more upcoming later on this element of the still unfolding drama of "The Great Game--21st Century Version.2012"].

All which makes everything from President Obama's mellifluous microphone malfunction mistake with the Russian president this March on down to the anonymous, if irrelevant, erroneous finger-pointing over who leaked the Israeli-Azeri air basing agreement. 

This coordinated campaign is simultaneously both sabre-rattling and a Persian-version of Miranda Rights (i.e.'FREEZE--CIA/JSOC, put down your nuclear weapons, or else!')

A virtual Wurlitzer of flying disinformation, flaming Cyber-Information-Operations and counter-intuitive Py-OPS?  The case can equally be made, if one changes their rose-colored contact lenses.

“There are Israeli's with brains ....“ wrote one recently retired European analyst and information operations officer with tours in Afghanistan and Sudan, and an active private intelligence discussion group participant. He immediately pointed to UNPRECEDENTED PUBLIC statements from two recently retired Israeli intelligence chiefs look less becoming in such a light:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/world/middleeast/yuval-diskin-criticizes-israel-government-on-iran-nuclear-threat.html ....

“I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” said Yuval Diskin, who stepped down last May after six years running the Shin Bet, Israel’s version of the F.B.I.

“I have observed them from up close,” Mr. Diskin added. “I fear very much that these are not the people I’d want at the wheel.” Echoing Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Mr. Diskin also said that the government was “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“Where they turn to the — pardon the phrase — ignorant public and say that if Israel acts, there won’t be a nuclear bomb — that is the wrong part of the sentence, a mirage,” Mr. Diskin said at a community forum in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli city of 80,000. “A lot of experts have long been saying that one of the results of an Israeli attack on Iran could be a dramatic acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program. What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly, they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time.”

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

The prolific Pierluigi Paganini, a leading cyber-security expert and writer based in Italy, points to the little-known precedents to intensifying US - Iran cyber-battles:

"Let’s also consider that in the past malware have been already used for sabotage purpose and intelligence purposes, in the 1980s, the United States had considerable success installing viruses inside Soviet military-industrial structure, a process still continuing with China.
 
“'We put in bugs inside the Soviet computers to feedback satellite information that had been ‘leeched’ off hard drives, in the Soviet Defense Ministry and others,' said a former U.S. intelligence official.

"Also during Desert Storm, the CIA and the British Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) have used malware agents to attack Iraq’s computers deploying a Command & Control server in the enemy infrastructures. CIA operatives, working in Jordan, infiltrated bugs into hardware smuggled across the border and into Baghdad. In that occasion the compromised devices weren’t used due the beginning US air strikes that destroyed Saddam’s command and control network, including the buildings where the infected computer hardware was deployed.

[The Russian Republic has another plan, apparently, (mitigating manufactured microphone malfunctions not withstanding)—which proves the key point new Member Piefluigi makes above, if counter-intuitively--in the ‘Great Game’ of what Comrade STALIN used to call NORTH IRAN, currently named AZERBAIJAN. MUCH More To COME on this POINT. –US/1]

Richard Clarke, the former NSC counter-terrorism tzar under two presidents, and one of the earliest advocates of cyber-security at the White House level, recently told Smithsonian magazine, that  he too believes the US is already at war, Cyber-WAR, with the Islamic Republic of Iran:

“I think it’s pretty clear that the United States government did the Stuxnet attack,” he said calmly.

This is a fairly astonishing statement from someone in his position.
“Alone or with Israel?” I asked.

“I think there was some minor Israeli role in it. Israel might have provided a test bed, for example. But I think that the U.S. government did the attack and I think that the attack proved what I was saying in the book [which came out before the attack was known], which is that you can cause real devices—real hardware in the world, in real space, not cyberspace—to blow up.”

As Italian cyber-security expert Paganini put it rather somberly last week, "the war is begun..."

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Cyber Attacks on Iran's ministry of science network

Posted on 29. Apr, 2012 by siavash

Tag: Computer Virus, Cyber Attack, Cyber team, cyberdefence, Cyberwarfare, Iran, Israel, malware

Sharg newspaper in Iran has reported that hackers have attacked the computers of Iran's ministry of science.

A senior source told the paper that there was no known damage and that the "situation was under control."

It is possible that the sites were hacked due to the fact that the ministry has joint projects with the defense ministry and that the "hackers intended to hack into the main servers to get information and cause damage, said an informed source at the Ministry of Science.

Last week Iran has confirmed that a cyber-attack hit its Oil Ministry data systems. It claims there was no damage, but its website is inaccessible.

Iranian officials last month said the country is strengthening its cyber power through a newly-formed Supreme Council of Cyberspace following the Stuxnet attack on its nuclear facilities last year, widely attributed to Israel and the United States.

Iran has been able to identify the source of a recently reported cyber-attack on its oil industry, an official at the Islamic Republic's Oil Ministry said on Saturday, adding that a computer virus attempted to "steal and damage data."(FNA)

Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Hamdollah Mohammadnejad says the target of and the perpetrators behind the recent cyber attack on the ministry have been identified.
“In general, the attack was in the form of a virus that aimed to steal and damage data,” the official said, adding that those who designed the malware “pursued certain objectives.”

He said after the malware attack was discovered the ministry’s cyber team immediately established an expert committee and disconnected the internal structure’s access to internet.

http://www.cyberwarzone.com/cyberwarfare/cyber-attacks-irans-ministry-science-network?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&goback=.gmp_4217323.gde_4217323_member_111376720

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New US Stealth Fighters Now at Iran's Back Door

By LEE FERRAN | ABC News – 16 hrs ago 26 April 2012

America's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters have been quietly deployed to an allied base less than 200 miles from Iran's mainland, according to an industry report, but the Air Force adamantly denied the jets' presence is a threat to the Middle East nation. 

Multiple stealth F-22 Raptors, which have never been combat-tested, are in hangars at the United Arab Emirates' Al Dafra Air Base, just a short hop over the Persian Gulf from Iran's southern border, the trade publication Aviation Week reported. 

Air Force spokesperson Lt. Col. John Dorrian would not confirm the exact location of the F-22s, but told ABC News they had been deployed to a base in Southwest Asia -- a region that includes the UAE. Dorrian also stressed that the F-22s were simply taking part in a scheduled deployment and are "not a threat to Iran." 

"This is a very normal deployment to strengthen military relationships, promote sovereign and regional security, improve combined tactical air operations and enhance interoperability of forces," Dorrian said. 

The F-22 has only been in the UAE once before for training missions in 2009 with "coalition partners." 

Dorrian declined to say what the Raptors' mission was in the region this time around or how many planes had been deployed, citing operational security. However, Dorrian said that because of the F-22's next-generation capabilities, any number of planes deployed to the region is "significant." 

Though the F-22 has been officially combat operational since December 2005, no planes from the Air Force fleet -- which are made by defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin and cost an estimated $79 billion -- have seen combat. The plane was not used in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the U.S.-led no-fly mission over Libya. The Air Force has said the sophisticated jets simply haven't been needed yet. 

But Jeff Babione, Lockheed Martin's vice president for the F-22 program, told ABC News last year that the plane was "absolutely" suited for taking on more sophisticated adversaries and could be used in deep penetration strike missions in well-defended combat zones inside places like North Korea or Iran.

Air Force: F-22s Ready for War, Despite Mystery Problem

The new deployment comes in the midst of the Air Forces' continuing battle with a rare but sustained oxygen problem plaguing the F-22. Since 2008, nearly two dozen pilots have reported experiencing "hypoxia-like symptoms" in mid-air. The problem got so bad that the Air Force grounded the planes for nearly five months last year in hopes of fixing the problem but never could. 

The service also does not know what caused the malfunction that cut off F-22 pilot Capt. Jeff Haney's oxygen shortly before he fatally crashed during a training mission in Alaska in 2010. 

But despite the ongoing issues, the Air Force says the F-22 is ready for war, should it be called. 

"If our nation needs a capability to enter contested air space, to deal with air forces that are trying to deny our forces the ability to maneuver without prejudice on the ground, it will be the F-22 that takes on that mission," Air Force Maj. Gen. Noel Jones, Director of Operational Capability Requirements, said at a special briefing at the Pentagon in March. "It can do that right now and is able to do that without hesitation." 

The Al Dafra base is approximately 800 miles from the Iranian capital of Tehran, well within the range of the F-22, which can "supercruise" at one and a half times the speed of sound.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-stealth-fighters-now-irans-back-door-142931425--abc-news-topstories.html

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• Sunday, April 29, 2012

Are Israeli politicians and intelligence professionals playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ with the mullahs of Iran?

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM — The continued variety of comments about Iran from the governing summit of Israel says something about this country and its society.

The problem: one cannot be sure what it says.

Last month, the former chief of Mossad spoke publicly on Amrican media.

Meir Dagan has been described as “hard-charging” and “stops at nothing.” For more than eight years, Dagan made full use of those qualities as chief of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, where he focused on keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. When that job ended, Dagan did something unheard of for an ex-Mossad chief: he spoke out publicly, voicing opposition to Israel launching preemptive airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities anytime soon.

Dagan believes the Iranian regime is a rational one and even its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – who has called for Israel to be annihilated – acts in a somewhat rational way when it comes to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Last week, we heard from the senior commander of the IDF, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz:  “Israel’s military chief said he does not believe Iranwill decide to build an atomic bomb and called its leaders “very rational“.”

More recently, the former head of the Shin Bet intelligence organization, Yuval Diskin, expressed himself.  ”Referring to the leaders as ‘our two messiahs,’ a likely reference to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Diskin said ‘they are not fit to hold the steering-wheel of power. I have no faith in the current leadership in Israel and its ability to conduct a war.’”

Regarding their handling of the Iranian nuclear issue, Diskin said the leadership “presents a false view to the public on the Iranian bomb, as though acting against Iran would prevent a nuclear bomb. But attacking Iran will encourage them to develop a bomb all the faster.”"

What we see here is the current head of the military and the recent heads of the two other major security arms of the Israeli state speaking out in direct contrast to the two political figures–the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense–who hold the power to decide about an attack on Iran. Netanyahu and Barak have threatened to attack if sanctions do not curb Iran’s nuclear program..

From the Defense Minister in an independence Day speech:  “The chances that, at this pressure level, Iran will respond to international demands to irreversibly stop its program seem low. I would be happy to be proven wrong.”

One of Netanyahu’s recent remarks:  “(Sanctions) better work soon. (They) are certainly taking a bite out of the Iranian economy, (but) they haven’t rolled back the Iranian program — or even stopped it — by one iota . . .I hope that changes, but so far, I can tell you, the centrifuges are spinning . . . they were spinning before the talks began recently with Iran, they were spinning during the talks, they’re spinning as we speak.”

Aides to Gantz, Netanyahu and Barak have sought to soften the differences between them. Israeli security personnel have, for some time now, expressed their reservations about an attack on Iran. A former head of military intelligence has said, “you hear different music from the political level and the professional level.”

The US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said about Gantz’s statement that he views Iran as rational and unlikely to construct a nuclear weapon, “I would hope he’s correct and he knows something more than I do.”

Comments were sharpest with respect to Diskin. Sources close to Netanyahu and Barak accused Diskin of operating from personal and political motives, and expressing his frustration at not being appointed to head the Mossad after retiring from the Shin Bet. One of the ministers in Netanyahu’s government said that his comments were “crude and inappropriate.” Another minister said that Diskin’s comments could damage the country’s standing. A Likud back bencher said that the Knesset should consider a law to silence former senior officials, “who are as quiet as fish when in office, and immediately upon retirement speak nonsense.”

Confusion? Disinformation? Or the reality of Israel’s unfettered society, where the most senior professional soldier and recently retired heads of super secret security organizations feel free to speak out against political leaders on one of the country’s most sensitive policy matters, and do so in a way that–in Diskin’s case–goes beyond the boundaries of ridicule?

Democracy, governmental chaos, or just Israel’s style of democracy?

Could it all be an orchestrated campaign, in cooperation with the United States?

In one fanciful hypothesis, Netanyahu and Barak are playing the bad cops, making threats to keep up the pressure on Iran to give up the nuclear option in the face of existing sanctions and the threat of military action. Dagan, Gantz, and Diskin are playing the good cops, expressing calm rationality in order to give Iranians reasons for avoiding their own “go to hell” option of building a weapon insofar as the views at the Israeli summit represented by Dagan, Gantz, and Diskin suggest that Israel will not attack.

By this view, the bad copy/good cop scenario is meant to both pressure Iran, and to convince its government to surrender their nuclear weapon ambitions to sanctions, without the need for an attack.

In contrast is is a less complex assessment that the comments from Dagan, Gantz, and Diskin are poorly timed, lessen Israel’s threat, and may encourage Iranians to feel that they can continue with their program to develop nuclear weapons without risking an attack on their country.

Certainty is not part of this analysis.

We may be dealing with Israeli creativity.

Or Israeli madness.

Or Israeli chaos.

*
Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University.  He may be contacted at ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com

Short URL: http://www.sdjewishworld.com/?p=27516