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Experts say Iran may retaliate for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, its top military leader, with cyberattacks on American companies. Chris McGrath/Getty Images hide caption

Experts say Iran may retaliate for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, its top military leader, with cyberattacks on American companies.

Hackers linked to Iran are probing American companies for vulnerabilities, cybersecurity researchers and U.S. government officials say.

The warnings suggest that the next phase of hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, following the Jan. 3 killing of a top Iranian general in an American drone strike, is likely to play out in cyberspace.

The Iranian regime is accused of being behind some high-profile online operations against American targets in recent years.

Between 2011 and 2013, hackers targeted big American banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Capital One. They flooded the banks' computer networks with traffic, knocking them offline and costing millions of dollars in lost business.

In 2018, a ransomware attack crippled the city of Atlanta, leaving police officers to write reports by hand and city workers punching in and out with time clocks.

In both cases, Iranian nationals were ultimately indicted.

In one of the most high-profile cases, hackers destroyed data on computers at the Sands casino in Las Vegas after its billionaire owner, Sheldon Adelson, called for a nuclear strike on Iran.

Iran's investment in its cyber army dates back to 2010, the year a powerful computer worm called Stuxnet infected an Iranian nuclear facility. The U.S. and Israel are believed to have been behind the attack, although neither country has ever acknowledged responsibility.

Stuxnet destroyed critical equipment and set back Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"As a result of the impact that Stuxnet had on the Iranian enrichment program, they formed, funded, trained and attached to their warfighting capabilities a very strong cybercapability," said Jordan Mauriello, senior vice president of managed security at cybersecurity firm CriticalStart.

Stuxnet hurt Iran, but Mauriello and other experts say it also demonstrated to the country's leaders the power of digital weapons to level the playing field against the military superiority of the U.S.

Iran has created teams of cyberwarriors inside the Revolutionary Guard Corps, its elite military wing. But Iran also relies on proxy groups and hackers aligned with its goals.

In the weeks since a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, nationalist "hacktivists" are suspected of defacing a U.S. government website with pro-Iran messages.

Cybertools enable "asymmetric" attacks by inflicting economic or reputational damage, said Kara Frederick, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

"Cyber allows them to compete at a level of parity that they don't have in the physical world," she said.

Iran has also used these tactics against other foes, including Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials blame Iran for wiping out data on three-quarters of computers at Aramco, the kingdom's giant oil company, in 2012.

While the threat of military escalation between the U.S. and Iran appears to have eased in recent days, U.S. government officials and security researchers are warning companies to be on the alert for cyberattacks.

"Right now what we're seeing instead is a huge increase in reconnaissance activity," Mauriello said. "Specifically looking for potentially vulnerable servers, data gathering. ... They're kind of preparing the battle plan in the cyberspace."

Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said agencies in his state have seen an increase in attempted computer intrusions attributed to Iran.

The Department of Homeland Security has also warned that Iran may retaliate for Soleimani's death with cyberattacks ranging from defacing websites to destroying data.

Iran's activities have shown its ability to cause financial harm and embarrassment. However, experts say a more serious cyber intrusion into critical U.S. infrastructure, like electrical grids, would take more time and effort.

"Cyber is not a magic button, meaning that it takes many months of planning to achieve a specific outcome," said Oren Falkowitz, a former National Security Agency analyst who is the CEO of Area 1 Security.

Iran is not alone in amping up its cybercapabilities. Researchers say Russia and China present the biggest threats to American targets.

And the U.S. has its own digital weapons to use against adversaries.

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US Government Officials And Security Experts Warn Of Iran Cyberthreat - NPR

Iranians burning the American flag in Tehran, November 2018, photo by Masoud Shahrestani via Wikimedia Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,423, January 26, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: On January 3, 2020, an American dronekilledIrans roving fixer in the Middle East, Quds commander Qassem Soleimani, sparking intense, but largely partisan, reactions in the US. While Republicans lauded President Trump, many Democrats worried that the action might spark a war with Iran. But while it is easy to criticize Trump for stirring up conflict in the Middle East, Iran has helped to create the conditions of this current conflict.

Opposition to the US has been a key component of the theocratic Iranian regimes identity since 1979. The founder of that regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, labeled the US the Great Satan. That moniker was no mere slur.

According to Khomeini, Western colonizers had infected societies such as Iran with secular values that served to undermine the more stable and independent religion-based order of the past. As the most powerful Western nation, and an ally of the brutal Shah of Iran before he was deposed, the US was a convenient target to embody the Great Satan.

For the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran, this narrative had multiple benefits. It appeased the Soviet empire, with which Iran shared a border. Shared antipathy toward the US neutralized the threat of a Soviet invasion. But this narrative also helped Khomeini rebrand Iran and assert its influence in the Middle East in direct contrast to the American presence in the region. And this is the battle in which we are embroiled today.

Relations werent always this strained between Iran and the US, despite Khomeinis attempts to portray America as an existential enemy.

In 1946, President Harry S. Trumandeliveredan ultimatum demanding that Soviet troops leave Iran. At the time, the Soviets were pressuring Iran to gain favorable oil rights. The US was vocal at the new UN Security Council about Soviet intentions in Iran and about the importance of Iranian sovereignty, and Soviet troops departed.

In the early 1950s, the US continued to support Iranian nationalism by serving as a broker between Britain and Iran during a struggle over oil rights. Truman in fact blocked British plans for a takeover of oil fields and a refinery in Iran.

This history of positive relations often gets forgotten, however, because the US is blamed for the 1953 overthrow of Iranian PM Muhammad Mossadegh.

To be sure, after years of back-and-forth between the British and Mossadegh, Truman came to believe that Mossadeghs extreme positions were bringing Iran to the brink of collapse. This view was shared by his successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.As Trumans secretary of state, Dean Acheson, told his British counterpart: If Iran did not occupy its peculiar geographic location, the problem would be much easier. It is not as though we [are] dealing with a country remote from the Soviet Union. It is in a bad spot.

But while America played a role in the coup, the story is more complicated. The once-popular PM had become politically weak after two years of failure to reach a compromise with the British. Mossadegh appeared increasingly vulnerable to pro-Soviet political elementsa threat he made clear in a letter to Eisenhower in June 1953. Mossadeghs vulnerabilities alienated the middle class, stirred up unrest in the officer corps, and, most importantly, turned off the clerics (a crucial part of the story that the mullahs of today conveniently overlook). The crisis peaked when Mossadegh made a desperate grab for power by dissolving parliament and trying to rule by decree.

Britain and the US persuaded Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, legally the ultimate authority in Iran, to dismiss Mossadegh in the face of this direct challenge to his authority. But Mossadegh got word of his impending dismissal and arrested the officer tasked with delivering the official letter. With no official request, the Shah temporarily fled the country out of fear that Mossadegh would overthrow him.

But in the following days, protests managed to topple the embattled leader. Mossadegh and his supporters bitterly claimed that the US was responsible and had financially supported the protests. But while the CIA provided a small amount of funding that was used to stir up anti-Mossadegh crowds, the protestsspread organicallybecause of the dire state of Irans economy.As noted by the US ambassador to Iran, the protesters seemed to come from all classes of people including workers, clerks, shopkeepers, students, et cetera.

While Mossadeghs fall was owed primarily to his flaws as a leader, it later became convenient fuel for Khomeinis distortions about Americas intentions toward Iran. Most Iranians believed the US had engineered it to save the Shah and therefore held the US responsible for the Shahs brutality.

In reality, during the intervening decades, the US triedand largely failedto persuade the Shah to democratize Iran and broaden his support. Instead, the autocrat suppressed all political groups apart from the clerics (whom he mistakenly viewed as an ally against nationalists and communists), thus paving the way for his demise. Khomeini capitalized on the clerical network and shrewdlyand falselypromoted himself as a democratizer in 1979.

Khomeini didnt bring democracy to Iran, but he did bring an imperial vision and an antagonism toward the US that manipulated this history for political gain.

Significantly, the theocratic government Khomeini imposed saw itself as the protector of Shiite Muslims worldwidewhich resulted in engagements far beyond its borders. This idea of an Islamic papacy based in Iran owed itself to the doctrine of velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent), which Khomeini reinterpreted to establish himself as the highest living religious authority on Earth until the coming of Shiite Islams messianic Hidden Imam.

After Khomeinis death in 1989, that role fell to his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who continued to paint the US as the Great Satan. This mythology, coinciding with American interventions in the Middle East since 2001, has served Khamenei with a convenient pretext for expanding Irans influence throughout the Middle East and for picking fights with America and its allies. Like his predecessor, Khamenei sees Iran as engaged in an epic struggle against the US. As he recently told a group of Iranian students: Do you think our battle with estekar [arrogance, meaning the US] will ever rest? This is an essence of the revolution. Its one of our principled tasks.

Since 2012, Iranian fingerprints have been found propping up the brutal dictatorship in Syria, as well as on the Houthi radicals in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories. Iran also engineered a long con in Iraq, where it used Shiite militias to rid the country of ISIS and then establish de facto governance in whats known as the liberated territories. Soleimani was a key architect of these actions.

When news of Soleimanis killing broke, analysts were quick to fret that the situation could easily spiral into war, implying that Trumps action had been irresponsible because of the risk. But that argument overlooks Irans shared responsibility for the current tensions and both the Islamic Republics stubborn insistence that it is locked into a struggle with the US and its imperial actions.

Contemporary relations between Iran and the US exist within a web of historical myths. But that doesnt mean war between the two countries is inevitable. Rather, it is the decisions of the leaders of both countries that will determine the outcome of the current crisis. Nevertheless, so long as Iran continues to see the US as the Great Satan, similar crises, if not necessarily all-out war, will continue to occur.

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This is an edited version of an article published by the Washington Post on January 6, 2020.

Gabriel Glickman is a nonresident associate fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is currently writing a book provisionally entitled, The Rise and Fall of World History: Avoiding Historical Amnesia in 21st Century Classrooms.

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Are the US and Iran Headed Toward War? - besacenter.org

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Irans top diplomat acknowledged Wednesday that Iranians were lied to for days after the Islamic Republic accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner. The admission came as new surveillance footage purported to show two surface-to-air missiles 20 seconds apart shred the airplane and kill all 176 people aboard.

The downing of the Ukraine International Airlines flight last week came amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S. over its unraveling nuclear deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for the first time Wednesday threatened Europe by warning its soldiers in the Mideast could be in danger over the crisis as Britain, France and Germany launched a measure that could see United Nations sanctions re-imposed on Tehran.

The crash and subsequent days of Iranian denials that a missile had downed the airplane has sparked angry protests in a country already on edge as its economy struggles under crushing American sanctions.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran reached a fever pitch two weeks ago with the American drone strike in Baghdad that killed the powerful Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The general had led Iranian proxy forces abroad, including those blame for deadly roadside bomb attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Iran retaliated with a ballistic missile strike targeting Iraqi military bases housing U.S. forces early last Wednesday, just before Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard shot down the Ukrainian airliner taking off from Tehrans Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Iran for days afterward insisted a technical fault downed the 3-year-old Boeing 737-800. It wasnt until Western governments, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, went public with their suspicions the plane had been shot down that Iran admitted it fired on the plane.

Not admitting the plane had been shot down was for the betterment of our countrys security, because if we had said this, our air defense system would have become crippled and our guys would have had doubted everything, said Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards aerospace program, in television footage aired Wednesday.

Hajizadeh only days earlier apologized on state television and said: I wish I were dead.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking at a summit in New Delhi, became the first official to describe Irans earlier claims as a lie.

In the last few nights, weve had people in the streets of Tehran demonstrating against the fact that they were lied to for a couple of days, Zarif said.

Zarif went onto praise Irans military for being brave enough to claim responsibility early on.

However, he said that he and Rouhani only learned that a missile had down the flight on Friday, raising new questions over how much power Irans civilian government has in its Shiite theocracy. The Guard knew immediately afterward its missile downed the airline.

The Guard is answerable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is expected to preside over Friday prayers in Iran for the first time in years over anger about the crash.

The new surveillance footage obtained by The Associated Press showing the missile fire was filmed off a monitor by a mobile phone. It appears to be taken near the town of Bidkaneh, northwest of Tehrans Imam Khomeini International Airport.

The two minutes of black-and-white footage purportedly shows one missile streaking across the sky and exploding near the plane. Ten seconds later, another missile is fired. Some 20 seconds after the first explosion, another strikes near the plane. A ball of flames then falls from the sky out of frame.

The footage corresponds with AP reporting, appears genuine and matches geographic features of the area. The date in the upper right-hand corner of the video appears to correspond to Irans Persian calendar. It also explains how so many people filmed the shoot down: The first explosion drew their attention and their filming mobile phones to the predawn sky.

Amid all of this, Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday launched the so-called dispute mechanism pertaining to Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran has been breaking limits of the accord for months in response to President Donald Trumps decision to unilaterally withdraw America from the deal in May 2018.

After Soleimanis killing, Iran announced it would no longer abide by any of the nuclear deals limits, which had been designed to keep Tehran from having enough material to be able to build an atomic bomb if it chose. However, Iran has said it will continue to allow the United Nations nuclear watchdog access to its nuclear sites.

Speaking before his Cabinet, Rouhani showed a rarely seen level of anger in wide-ranging remarks Wednesday that included the threat to Europe.

Today, the American soldier is in danger, tomorrow the European soldier could be in danger, Rouhani said. We want you to leave this region but not with war. We want you to go wisely. It is to your own benefit.

Rouhani did not elaborate.

European forces have been deployed alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. France also maintains a naval base in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, while Britain has opened a base in the island nation of Bahrain.

European Commission spokesman Peter Stano told reporters that officials were aware of the threats, but the European Union had no plans to leave Iraq. Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini told lawmakers his government has plans to increase Romes troop levels at the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil passes.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, meanwhile, made an unannounced visit Wednesday to the Azraq base in Jordan, where German troops serving in the fight against the Islamic State group are based. Germany wants to resume training Iraqi forces.

Rouhani also reiterated a longtime Iranian pledge that Tehran doesnt seek the bomb. That pledge comes amid Western fears that the time it would need to have enough material for a nuclear weapon is narrowing. Under the deal, experts estimated Iran needed a year.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Iranian state media said the British ambassador to Iran, Robert Macaire, had left the country. Macaire departed after being given what the state-run IRNA news agency described as prior notice, without elaborating. Britains Foreign Office insisted Macaires trip to London was routine, business as usual and was planned before his arrest and brief detention in Tehran on Saturday. He was detained after attending a vigil about the plane shoot down that turned into an anti-government protest. Britain said he planned return to Iran.

___

Schmall reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writers Nadia Ahmed and Jill Lawless in London, Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ukraine, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Frances DEmilio in Rome contributed to this report.

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Video: 20 seconds of terror between missiles in Iran crash

Cars drive through a busy road in Tehran last July. Manufacturing including automobiles, metals and plastics accounts for about a fifth of overall employment in Iran. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Cars drive through a busy road in Tehran last July. Manufacturing including automobiles, metals and plastics accounts for about a fifth of overall employment in Iran.

Since 2017, the Trump administration has placed layers of tough sanctions on Iran in an effort to deprive the regime of financial resources and to force it to negotiate a new nuclear deal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a recent speech that the administration's strategy of "maximum pressure" aims to cut off 80% of Iran's oil revenues and that "President Rouhani himself said that we have denied the Iranian regime some $200 billion in lost foreign income and investment as a result of our activities."

Yet Iran's economy has not collapsed.

"I think the predictions of a quick economic collapse were too optimistic," says Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economics professor at Virginia Tech specializing in the Iranian economy. Despite the Trump administration's crushing sanctions, there is "a misunderstanding of the level of complexity of Iran's economy and how good they are or how experienced they are with resisting sanctions."

To be sure, the increasing sanctions since 2017 have hit Iran's economy hard.

"Unemployment is high; inflation is high. They're running out of foreign exchange," says Salehi-Isfahani. "The economy is not in good shape at all."

Certain goods, such as food products, are not affected by secondary sanctions on Iran. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Certain goods, such as food products, are not affected by secondary sanctions on Iran.

But over the past four decades, Iran has had a lot of experience with sanctions and has learned to withstand their impact, he says. And it's no different this time.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund estimate Iran's gross domestic product is on track to decline by roughly 9% this year. (Iran's own estimates are lower, Salehi-Isfahani says). Compare that with the 1970s and late 1980s, when the U.S. imposed sanctions after Americans were held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. At that time, Iran's GDP per capita dropped by 50%, according to Salehi-Isfahani.

The World Bank and IMF estimates of economic decline take into account a sharp drop in Iran's oil exports. Before the U.S. pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, Iran was exporting about 2 million barrels of crude oil a day. Now it's estimated that Iran exports between 300,000 and 500,000 barrels daily, most of that to China, says Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, the founder of Bourse and Bazaar, an organization that tracks developments in Iran's economy.

But Iran isn't solely reliant on oil, Batmanghelidj notes.

"The Iranian economy is a very diverse economy, and manufacturing is really one of the most important areas," he says. "Currently, manufacturing accounts for about one-fifth of overall employment in the country."

Batmanghelidj says that includes automobiles, metals and plastics. The U.S. sanctions make it difficult for Iranian businesses to access goods needed to make the products, and it's tough to find customers abroad because there's fear the Trump administration will also slap secondary sanctions on any company doing business with Iran.

But some Iranian manufacturers can stay afloat because of informal payment systems that don't rely on banks to get money in and out of the country, Batmanghelidj says. Also, certain goods are not affected by secondary sanctions.

"They're really basic goods, like food products or like consumer products, including things like household products, like detergent or shampoo," he says.

Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist at the Brookings Institution, says Iran also has "well-integrated" relations with regional partners, through which it can barter, trade or use other types of arrangements to maintain some economic activity.

"The Iranians really do have alternative industries to fall back on and a significant domestic capacity, as well as the ability to leverage their relationships with several of their neighboring states to try to muddle through economic adversity," she says. "Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the Central Asian republics and, of course, Syria, elsewhere across the region it does have a reach that goes beyond that of the U.S. Treasury Department."

A shortage of imported goods has helped spur domestic production, Salehi-Isfahani says. That, in turn, has helped create more employment for Iranians.

But it's hard to gauge how much patience the Iranian population has. Forty years ago, he says, Iranians were willing to put up with hardships caused by U.S. sanctions. Now they are protesting in the streets.

"As we have noticed in the last few months," he says, "that tolerance isn't there. To what extent the government can maintain public order in the face of this 10 to 20% decline in living standards, I don't know."

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Why Iran's Economy Has Not Collapsed Amid U.S. Sanctions And 'Maximum Pressure' - NPR

BEIJING They accuse each other of inciting violence. They denounce one another as corrupt. They call each other terrorists.

As tensions between the United States and Iran persist after the American killing of a top Iranian general this month, the two countries are waging a heated battle in an unlikely forum: the Chinese internet.

The embassies of the United States and Iran in Beijing have published a series of barbed posts in recent days on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site, attacking each other in Chinese and in plain view of the countrys hundreds of millions of internet users.

The United States Embassy has accused Iran of leaving bloodstains everywhere. The Iranian Embassy has denounced the Jan. 3 killing of the general, Qassim Suleimani, and vowed to seek the end of Americas evil forces in western Asia.

The battle has captivated people in China, where diplomatic rows rarely break into public view and the government often censors posts about politics.

The trolling comes at a time when the United States is pressuring American technology companies to censor content by groups the government has identified as terrorist organizations. Reports have emerged that Facebook, for example, is censoring some pro-Iran posts, including on Instagram. The company said in a statement that it was obliged to review some posts in order to comply with American sanctions.

Iran, for its part, has for years sought to hinder the flow of information from the West more broadly, blocking Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

Chinese news outlets have covered the skirmish breathlessly, describing Weibo as the new battlefield between the two countries. A hashtag referring to the Weibo fight had been viewed more than 1.5 million times as of Thursday.

The Chinese authorities operate one of the worlds most aggressive censorship systems, routinely scrubbing reports, comments and posts on the internet that are deemed politically sensitive or subversive. Posts by foreign diplomats are known to have been censored, especially on topics such as North Korea or human rights.

But the government has so far allowed the war of words between the United States and Iran to continue, perhaps because it deflects attention away from issues in China, analysts said.

Any topic that provides a distraction from internal problems in China is beneficial to Beijing, said Fergus Ryan, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who has studied Chinas censorship of posts by foreign embassies. This just happens to be a case where Beijing sees little downside for itself as Iran and the U.S. squabble.

Many Chinese internet users have used the occasion to criticize the United States as an imperialist power, echoing a favorite propaganda theme of Beijing. Others have praised Weibo for allowing the discussion to be published, reacting to the news that Facebook had been censoring some posts.

The American Embassy, which has more than 2.6 million followers on Weibo, said it welcomed the debate.

We expect critical discussion and debate, which might include both support and criticism of U.S. policy, the embassy said in a statement, describing its approach to social media in China.

The Iranian Embassy, with more than 300,000 followers, did not respond to a request for comment.

China and Iran have sought closer relations in recent years, especially as American sanctions have increased economic pressure on Tehran.

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, visited Beijing in late December, just days before the killing of the general, to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. At the meeting, Mr. Wang criticized overseas bullying practices, a remark that was seen as aimed at the United States.

In its Weibo posts, the Iranian Embassy made a point of appealing to Chinese internet users, thanking them for their support and even suggesting that they visit Iran for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday (safety is not an issue, the embassy wrote).

Iran might be particularly eager to gain attention and validation from the Chinese public, experts said.

China has provided Iran with very important economic and political lifelines in recent years when U.S. sanctions have choked that country, said Hongying Wang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Positive responses from Chinese commenters could help boost the legitimacy of the Iranian government in the eyes of its own people, she added.

Albee Zhang contributed research.

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U.S. and Iran Are Trolling Each Other in China - The New York Times