A chance comment by Israeli Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon suggested that a full-blown cyber attack by a mutated form of Stuxnet was at work again in Iran – this time deep underground in the uranium enrichment plant buried in a Fordow bunker near Qom.

The US is to shelve its covert war against Iran's nuclear program and any plans for a direct military attack until it discovers how Iran came to capture the top-secret RQ-170 reconnaissance drone complete with its secrets. Israel too will have to revamp its plans of attack before risking ...

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion of the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir base last Saturday, Nov. 12  point increasingly to a technical fault caused by the computer system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran's ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36 officers killed in the blast. debkafile: The IRGC is investigating the possible Stuxnet virus infection of this computer system as the cause of the explosion.

New revelations from US intelligence sources confirm day by day that Iran has attained a nuclear weapon capability: Implosion experiments at Parchin were uncovered Sunday; its six-year old ability to build detonators for triggering a nuclear chain reaction, reported Monday. Stuxnet  which invaded Natanz in June 2010 delayed but did not derail Iran's forward march towards a weapon. The US president and Israeli prime minister vowed never to let Iran attain a nuclear capability. So what are they going to do now?

Daryush Rezaee-Nejad, 35, who died Saturday, July 23, when two motorcyclists shot him in the head and throat in front of his home in Tehran, was a rising star of the new generation of Iranian nuclear scientists. debkafile's Iranian sources disclose he was attached to one of the most secret teams of Iran's nuclear program, employed by the defense ministry to construct detonators for the nuclear bomb and warhead already in advanced stages of development. 

debkafile's intelligence sources report that the Stuxnet malworm which played havoc with Iran's nuclear program for eleven months was not purged after all. Tehran never did overcome the disruptions caused by Stuxnet or restore its centrifuges to smooth and normal operation as was claimed. Indeed, Iran finally resorted to the only sure-fire cure, scrapping all the tainted machines and replacing them with new ones – as was indicated Tuesday by an announcement in Tehran.

The three scientists who planned, designed, built and operated Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr died Tuesday night, June 20, when a Rusaero flight from Moscow crashed at Petrozavodsk in northwest Russia. debkafile reveals they were among the 44 passengers killed. Their loss is a blow to Russia's atomic reactor and energy industries because of their expertise in synchronizing different nuclear systems. Some intelligence sources say that Bushehr's amalgam of systems made it vulnerable to the Stuxnet virus two years ago.

By April 2011, Iran had accumulated a quantity of U-235 that can be enriched in short order to sufficient 90 percent (weapons grade) uranium to fuel four nuclear bombs - and attained "virtual" nuclear weapon state. This was revealed by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, America's scientific watchdog on world nuclear weapons production, in its June 2 report.  By breaking the IAEA seal at the Natanz enrichment plant, Iran gained another 6-7 months for concealing the work there.

After giving up on US and Israel ever confronting Iran, Saudi Arabia has struck out against the Obama administration for a Gulf campaign to cut down the Islamic Republic's drive for a nuclear bomb and its expansionist meddling in Arab countries, debkafile's sources report. King Abdullah is confident that combined Gulf missile, air force and naval strength are capable of striking deep inside Iran. Its nuclear program is seen in Riyadh as gaining momentum after recovering from a cyber war. 

Saudi and Kuwait officials have warned the US that if Iran activates its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr in May as planned, there is a good chance it will blow up and the entire Gulf region suffer a nuclear disaster on the scale of the misfortune at Japan's Fukushima thereby exposing millions to radiation contamination. In recent Saudi-US talks on the acute crisis in their relations, King Abdullah demanded immediate action by Washington to stop the Iranian plant going on line.

Iran's atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Jan. 29 that the Bushehr nuclear power plant would be connected to the national grid on April 9. He "forgot" about Tehran's promise to fully activate its first nuclear reactor Tuesday, Jan. 25.  debkafile's sources reveal that, Iran's hand was held back at the last minute by Russia's nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko. He warned Stuxnet was back and activating the reactor could trigger a nuclear catastrophe costing millions of lives.

The Islamic regime in Tehran suffers the ignominy of keeping its first nuclear reactor shut down at Bushehr for fear of the lurking Stuxnet. Russia asks NATO to investigate the dangerous malworm for fear of a Chernobyl-scale atomic catastrophe.

Iran has blocked thousands of fuel trucks from crossing into Afghanistan as its initial reprisal for US fuel sanctions and the reported US-Israeli partnership in activating the Stuxnet virus against its nuclear program, debkafile's sources report. More Iranian retribution is ahead. The fuel shortage and insurgent attacks on fuel convoys coming in from Pakistan are showing their mark on the war effort.

(The coming DEBKA-Net-Weekly out next Friday deals with Iranian-Taliban collusion in Afghanistan.  To subscribe, click here) 

Outgoing Mossad Director Meir Dagan has revised his earlier prognosis that Iran would not have nuclear weapons before 2015 because of technical obstacles. In his last briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and the Security Committee, Monday, Jan. 17, Dagan said, "The Iranian nuclear challenge will remain significant… the timing will not change the fact that Iran is working towards nuclear military capabilities and in certain scenarios can shorten the timeline." He mentioned North Korea in this context.

Israel chalks up a victory in its secret war for delaying Iran's attainment of a nuclear bomb. Minister for Strategic affairs Moshe Yaalon noted: Iran is not currently able to make a nuclear bomb on its own - an oblique reference to the Stuxnet virus reportedly developed jointly with ...

The Stuxnet virus which has crippled Iran's nuclear program is suddenly the object of a British campaign to convince the British and American public that the virus is the enemy of the West and sold on the black market to terrorists, debkafile's sources report. In the United States, cyber war experts embrace Stuxnet and call for its use against North Korea after its success against Iran.
London looks like distancing itself in general from US policies on Iran.

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.  Stuxnet is also on the march inside Iran's military systems, sowing damage and disorder in its wake.

The Iranians have never admitted that Stuxnet delayed the loading of fuel into the Bushehr nuclear plant, nor discovered its source. They can therefore not be sure it is not lurking in the system to stall the reactor's activation.

The Tehran Prosecutor General announced Tuesday, Oct. 26 that two people would go on trial for collaborating with Israeli intelligence - in addition to the five arrested earlier on charges of contacts with foreign intelligence services. He did not identify any of the seven accused, stressing only that they had all received large sums of money.

debkafile's sources link the arrests to the loading of fuel into the Bushehr reactor earlier that day.

Information reaching the West indicates Iran has put to death atomic scientists and technicians suspected of helping plant the Stuxnet virus in its nuclear program. The admission by Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization, on Friday, Oct. 8 - the frankest yet by any Iranian official - that Western espionage had successfully penetrated its nuclear program is seen as bearing out those reports. The Iranian program is further slowed by extreme security.