German expert says worm consisted of 2 “digital warheads”; compares technological advancement to “appearance of F-35 fighter jet in WWI.”

The German computer security expert who first reported that the Stuxnet worm was designed to attack targets in Iran said the virus specifically attacked the country’s nuclear program, in a report posted Friday.

In his analysis, Ralph Langner said Stuxnet contained two distinct “digital warheads,” specifically designed to attack military targets: Uranium enrichment plants and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Langner said that the portion of the worm that targeted Uranium enrichment plants manipulated the speeds of mechanical parts in the enrichment process, which would ultimately “result in cracking the rotor, thereby destroying the centrifuge.”

He said the strategic importance of such an attack is that it was able to “attack and destroy centrifuge facilities that are unknown to IAEA inspectors and the world,” saying that this was likely the main goal of the worm’s first “warhead.”

The second “warhead” targeted the Bushehr nuclear plant, according to Langner’s report. Explaining how the program was designed to work, he notes that this segment of code had no relation to the first “warhead.”

He purported that the second segment was intended to attack the external turbine controller of the Bushehr plant, a 150 foot “chunk of metal,” that could “destroy the turbine as effectively as an air strike.”

Praising the sophistication of the attack code, Langner said, “it is obvious that several years of preparation went into the design of this attack.” Describing the technological advancement it represents, he compared it to “the arrival of an F-35 fighter jet on a World War I battlefield.” He called the technology, “much superior to anything ever seen before, and to what was assumed possible.”

Moscow is on the march. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the most destabilizing — and reckless — great power on the world stage. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia could have become a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors.

Instead, Mr. Putin is erecting a Great Russian empire. He has imposed a brutal police state at home. Journalists routinely are killed. Critics and dissidents are jailed. Media freedoms and opposition parties are under assault. A gangster elite runs the Kremlin, plundering the country’s vast wealth.

Russia has become a rogue state. Mr. Putin’s aim is to make Moscow the center of an anti-American, anti-Western axis. Russia has waged a genocidal war in Chechnya. It has de facto annexed the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It has reduced Belarus to an economic vassal. It menaces the Baltic States. Moscow asserts a sphere of influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It has sold vital missile and nuclear technology to Iran’s mullahs. It has close ties with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Yet the Russian bear seeks an even bigger prize: Ukraine. This nation of 46 million, whose size is that of Germany and Britain combined, is of vital geopolitical importance — to both Russia and the West. Ukraine literally means borderland. Throughout the centuries, hostile neighbors — Russia, Poland, Lithuania — have sought to control Ukraine’s rich resources and minerals. Because of its geographic location, Ukraine’s fate has been to serve as a bridge between Asia and Europe; it straddles the civilizational fault line separating West and East. This is Ukraine’s curse and blessing.

Mr. Putin understands that his imperial ambitions ultimately can be achieved only if Ukraine is subjugated. Russia with Ukraine resembles America — a vast continental superpower. Without it, Russia is more like Canada — a large country mostly covered in snow.

Moreover, a democratic and prosperous Ukraine is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Putin regime. It will serve as a model for its northern Slavic cousins to imitate — a viable, attractive alternative to Mr. Putin’s barbarism. Hence, for Moscow, Ukraine must be smashed; its experiment in independence must be subverted.

Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, is a political battleground pitting pro-Russian forces against pro-Western nationalists. President Viktor Yanukovych is trying to roll back the clock to pre-Orange Revolution days. In 2004, backed by the Kremlin, he tried to steal the election, sparking street protests that culminated in the Orange Revolution. Earlier this year, he won elections — this time, fairly — on a platform of economic renewal and national reconciliation.

Mr. Yanukovych, however, has again proved the adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. He is a Russophile thug who is slowly forging an authoritarian state. His government has centralized power, repealing amendments to the constitution — without public debate or any kind of vote — that substantially weaken parliament. Media censorship is on the rise. Journalists critical of the regime have disappeared mysteriously. In recent regional elections, opposition parties were harassed. Ballot tampering and voter fraud were rampant.

Mr. Yanukovych’s base is in the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine — the Sovietized industrial east. His Party of Regions seeks to make Russian an official language; in fact, its website refuses to use Ukrainian. He has put joining NATO and the European Union on the back burner — bowing to Moscow’s demands. Slowly, but surely, he is splitting Kiev from the West. In short, he is Mr. Putin’s poodle.

The result is that Ukraine is a sovereign country in name only. Moscow funds Mr. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and numerous Ukrainian think tanks and media outlets. The Kremlin has issued thousands of Russian passports in the Crimea, thereby creating Russian “citizens” who in the future may need “protection” from imaginary threats in Kiev — repeating the pattern established in Georgia. Also, the lease for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol — set to expire in 2017 — was extended until 2042. Ukraine is being transformed into a Russian protectorate.

Mr. Putin despises Ukrainian nationalism. At a 2008 NATO meeting, the Russian strongman told then-President George W. Bush, “Ukraine is not a real country.” Rather, Mr. Putin said, it was a “gift” from Moscow, whose major territories formed part of czarist Russia. He publicly refers to Ukraine as “Little Russia.” His comments are not only insulting and disrespectful, but belligerent.

It is high time Washington takes notice. President Obama’s efforts to press the “reset button” in relations with the Kremlin have failed, emboldening Mr. Putin’s fascist regime. Ukraine’s descent into Putinism would be a tragedy of historical proportions. Contrary to Moscow’s propaganda, Ukraine is not a regional outpost of Russian civilization; rather, it is part of the European main — a long-suffering nation with a distinct cultural identity rooted in Western values, a separate language and unique Slavic heritage.

Ukraine is the eastern ramparts of the West. It is a strategic bulwark against Russian expansionism. It is not “Little Russia” but a nation in its own right. America cannot turn a blind eye. We must slap the bear down and tell Mr. Putin unequivocally to keep his greedy paws off Ukraine.

On November 21, 1984, a seven-week clandestine operation to bring Falash Mura Ethiopian Jews to Israel began. The unprecedented undertaking, code-named “Operation Moses,” was a three-way collaboration between the Mossad, the CIA and Sudanese State Security (SSS) to smuggle nearly 8,000 Falash Mura out of refugee camps in Sudan in a massive airlift to Israel. Operation Moses turned out to be the beginning of large-scale, official Israeli efforts to facilitate a Falash Mura aliyah that continues to this day.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel ruled that Ethiopian Jews had the right to immigrate to the country under the Law of Return in 1975. A few years later, small-scale efforts had already begun to bring individual and small groups of Falash Mura to Israel. However, these efforts, undertaken through semi-official and sometimes illegal channels quickly became impractical and too difficult to continue. A larger-scale covert operation would be necessary.

In 1981, significant numbers of Falash Mura, whose Jewish heritage goes back 3,000 years, began an onerous and often deadly trek. These Falash Mura joined several hundred thousand Ethiopians who had already fled to Sudan to escape the virulent famine that was plaguing Ethiopia. However, most of those who would eventually be smuggled out of Sudan in Operation Moses did not make the journey until 1983-84. Conditions on the trek were particularly brutal and an estimated 4,000 of those hoping to make it to Israel died of malnutrition and disease, never finishing the journey on which they risked everything to embark.

When reports began arriving in late 1984 that large numbers of Falash Mura were dying from malnutrition in Sudanese refugee camps, the decision to begin Operation Moses was made. The Mossad and the CIA, which already had a presence in Khartoum, began making arrangements with the semi-autonomous SSS agency for a massive airlift operation. In preparation, the Falash Mura were moved to rented houses in the Sudanese town of Gedaref before being brought to Khartoum International Airport where nearly 8,000 were eventually flown to Israel on charter flights operated by a Belgian airline. On November 21, 1984, the first flight took off from the Khartoum airport – where the SSS had set aside a special runway for the operation – and landed in Israel. Operation Moses had begun.

Over the following seven weeks, more than 30 flights brought approximately 200 Ethiopian Jews at a time to Israel. The flurry of flights ran without a hitch until Friday January 5, 1985, when then-prime minister Shimon Peres publicly confirmed media reports of the covert operation. Immediately following the Israeli acknowledgment, fearing pressure from other Arab bloc countries, the already-weak Sudanese president ordered a halt to the clandestine emigration. It is not known exactly why news of the operation was leaked, but several sources have speculated that an Israeli government official who was alarmed by the number of Ethiopian Jews arriving was responsible.

What is known is that some 800 Falash Mura were left behind in Sudan. The Israeli government, however, was determined to finish what it had started. Two months later, with the encouragement of Israeli officials, then-US vice president and recently retired CIA director George H.W. Bush planned and executed the second half of Operation Moses, known in Israel as Operation Sheba and in the US as Operation Joseph.
In March 1985, Bush personally flew to Sudan to arrange the second half of the airlift. After managing to convince the Sudanese president to allow him the US to complete the final stage of the operation, the CIA scouted and prepared a small airfield in al-Azaza near Gedaref, where the Falash Mura had previously been gathered prior to their departure. Mossad agents – Ethiopian Jews who had made aliyah before Operation Moses – located those Falash Mura who remained in refugee camps and drove them to the remote airfield. The soon-to-be-Israelis were quickly boarded onto several US military C-130 Hercules aircraft, landing at the run-down airstrip in 20 minutes intervals, that flew them directly to Israel.

Together, Operation Moses and Operation Sheba brought approximately one third of the Ethiopian Falash Mura to Israel. The consequences of the operation, which some estimates put as costing $300 million, were felt on several continents. In Sudan, news of the government’s cooperation with Israel helped lead to the downfall of the president and his Western-aligned regime. As a result, the United States lost an important ally in east Africa and the Arab world. In Israel, the Jewish state had begun to experience yet another aliya and the ensuing difficulties of absorbing members of a Jewish tradition foreign to most Israelis.

The next wave of Ethiopian emigration would not take place for another six years when Operation Solomon (which brought an additional 14,000 Falash Mura) was finally made possible by regime change in Ethiopia in 1991. Only this past week, in November 2010, the government finally approved plans to bring the nearly 8,000 Falash Mura waiting in Ethiopia to Israel. Although the Ethiopian exodus has taken over 25 years thus far, it pales in comparison to the 40 years its namesake required to lead the Exodus from Egypt.

The question is not whether Iran will get a nuclear weapon; it is about where and against whom it will use it.

Is the civilized community ready to reconcile with the Iranian nuclear bomb? There is only one answer to the question: It is, because it has no other options.
Years of peace initiatives, conferences, “good will gestures” and fruitless diplomatic shifts have taken their toll: Iran has passed (or is about to pass) the line after which the creation of the nuclear weapon becomes an irreversible reality. And no sanctions — neither strong, nor soft — will change the situation.

The problem has resolved itself and all that Obama, Sarkozy and other enlightened leaders can do is to accept the reality as it is. Considering their full failure, it will be the most reasonable decision. As the proverb says “If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth”.
The main question today is: What will come next? What will happen, when Teheran gets the terrible weapon?

Historical experience shows that possession of nuclear weapons in itself is not a source of destabilization. On the contrary, it can serve as a means of deterrence. Consider:

The case of the Soviet Union, compelled to find an adequate answer to the post-war USA challenge;
China, which feared (despite the anti-American rhetoric) Soviet expansion;
Israel’s “Samson Option”; India and Pakistan, aspiring to neutralize each other;
and the Pyongyang regime, wishing to maintain power.
However in the case of Iran, the situation is different. The country has no enemies capable of threatening it. If there is something that can provoke the USA and Israel to attack Iran, it is its nuclear program in combination with aggressive rhetoric and expansion of Islamic revolution.

The purpose of Iran is not to deter its enemies but to change the balance of power in the Middle East and to bring the whole world under control. This is not a casual whim of Ayatollahs. Firstly, it is consonant with Persian expectations about the World Power that trace back to Cyrus the Great. Secondly, it is the Shi’ite aspirations connected with the appearance of Mehdi and expectations of the Apocalypse.

These were theological and civilization aspects of the problem. In real-politic, Iranian aspirations are expressed in plans of hegemony in the Persian Gulf and total Shi’ite expansion in the region. “Iranian push” must draw a line under almost one-and-a-half-thousand-year argument between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam.

The present geopolitical situation has, from the point of view of Iranians, their pluses and minuses. “Pluses” consist in the unique “window of possibilities”, which Iran had not had since the Sassanid’s (VI-VII centuries). “Minuses” are that the “window of possibilities” is faced with time constraints.

Let’s list these “pluses”:

Disappearance from the political scene of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the “sentry dog” for Iran and the inevitable vacuum of power in the region after American armies leave Iraq;
Growth of Shi’ite radicalism;
Steady high oil prices; Selling oil is the basis of Iranian economy;
Clear weakness of the West; Appeasement policy of the White House;
Pro-Iranian position of the Turkish Justice and Development Party;
Turkey had always been a counterbalance to the Persian influence;
Paralysis, corruption and unpopularity of the rulers of the Arab world.
“Minuses” refer to the time factor:

Extraordinary high oil prices can start declining and it will undermine the abilities of the regime;
Rather low birth rate, which is already not exceeding the European one;
Threat of internal instability;
Inevitable race of nuclear arms in the region;
Danger of Taliban and Al Qaida, the sworn enemies of the Islamic Republic, capturing power in Pakistan;
Possibility of a strong president, like Ronald Reagan, coming to power in the USA.
“The window of possibilities” is measured not by decades, but by years, and Iran has to act not quickly, but rapidly. In this situation the nuclear bomb cannot just be the weapon of deterrence or intimidation factor. Iran must paralyze the will of the enemies and not just frighten them. It can’t afford positional warfare as the USSR or China in the years of the “cold war”, it requires a blitzkrieg.

That is why a nuclear weapon must not only exist in Iran’s arsenal, it must be used. This requirement will become much more vital if the initial Shi’ite press in Iraq and Gulf States; or the aggression of “Hizbullah” and Hamas against Israel meet resistance and fail.

Where and against whom? Israel? It seems reasonable, but only at first sight.

The Iranian goal is to bring nearer Mehdi’s appearance and not to commit suicide for the sake of it. Iranian rockets are not of sufficient accuracy, and the regime has not much time for the development of nuclear missiles. Israel in its turn has advanced rockets with nuclear warheads and nuclear submarines. In case of destroying “Zionist formation”, the Islamic Republic itself would stand the risk of turning into a scorched desert.

Besides, even insignificant discrepancy in calculations can become fatal, because only 60km separate Greater Tel Aviv from the sacred Muslim sites in Jerusalem. I don’t think the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock together with several hundred thousand Muslims is the best scenario for Ayatollahs. And at last, weak as it is, Obama’s administration won’t be able to stay neutral.

Iranian Ayatollahs never showed desire to burn down in the Apocalypse so anticipated by them. It means, the bomb should be used, but without threatening the regime.

Therefore the object of the nuke strike should satisfy the number of conditions: Deserted and remote from mass-media area with low population density; It should be the enemy, which has no capabilities required for an adequate response; The USA should remain out of the conflict area; The result must produce a “knockout” effect; The object of the nuke strike should be far away from the Iranian border.

These are rigid restrictions, but they leave certain options.

As I have already said, neither th USA nor Zionists are sworn enemies of Shi’ite Iran. They are no more than a “scarecrow”, like American imperialism of the 60s was for China. Radical Sunni Islam is the real enemy of Persian Shi’ites, and Iran is going to fight it to death.

Hitler abused imperialists and England left and right, while preparing for the fight against severe and ruthless, like Germany itself, Stalin’s Russia. In the 80s Saddam threatened to wipe out Israel, preparing military expansion to Iran. Rhetoric is not always consistent with true purposes of speakers.

Iran is terrified by the prospect of a nuclear bomb in the hands of adherents of a caliphate. And Teheran plans to paralyze their will.

Where? There are two perfect options: Al Qaida bases in Yemen and Taliban bases in Afghanistan after Americans leave them.

Both are deserted areas with small populations far from Iranian borders. Besides, this enemy is dangerous not only for Iran but for the West, too. Striking a fatal blow, Iranians won’t be afraid of a response strike. Finding a pretext will not be a problem… It will clear the way to Iranian triumph in the Middle East and test the patience of the West. However, the results can be predicted beforehand …

“There is nothing in Iran which is called Persian or Persian Civilization. What exists in Iran is the Islamic Civilization…. And the founder of the Islamic Republic is an Arab, son of Arab…. The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic today is the Imam Khamenei, [a] Sayyed….” — Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of terrorist organization Hizbullah

In the past 2300 years, Iranians have witnessed many brutal invasions because of their geopolitical significance. From Alexander to Mongolians to Turks to Angelo-Russo alliance, Iranians have suffered greatly as they picked up the pieces and rebuilt their country from countless destructions and mayhem. But for the most part, those invasions were put to rest in Iran’s history.

The one incursion, however, that has yet to come to a conclusion is the Muslim Arab invasion beginning in the 7th Century. An invasion that outlasted all other foreign assaults by using a more creative strategy in maintaining its hold on Iran’s natural and cultural resources for its benefit by infiltrating not only physical borders of the nation; but it’s language, heritage, and identity as well as the forceful assumption of Iran’s great achievements under the falsely coined umbrella term — “Islamic Civilization.”

For centuries, Iran has been combating against this foreign invasion of ideas and encroachments to preserve its identity. Many patriotic nationalist warriors and leaders have come and gone in this endeavor. Many Iranian men, women, and children have perished in this cause. But despite this persistent violence brought on by foreign invaders, never before had Iran in its modern history faced a true decisive battle against it until now.

The secular, nationalist regime prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution mistakenly assumed that increasing domestic literacy and standard of living would resolve Iran’s internal soul-searching.

But that vision failed, because it did not include proper studies and analysis of theocracies, Sharia Laws, and the nation’s historical fight against Islamization in relation to social equalities and equities.

Under the Islamic Republic during the past 31 years, however, the Iranian experience has finally revealed to the nation the realities of its demise and why this particular foreign invasion has lasted for centuries. With the help of domestic multimedia and technology know-how as well as a huge, successful diaspora spread across the globe, Iranians now recognize the magnitude of their national conflict.

Enlightened and patriotic Iranians know the time has come!

Either Iran will stand as a secular, productive nation firmly rooted in its foundation inclusive to all peoples and creeds, or share the fate of neighboring states in losing its national identity via Islamization while excluding minorities from their civil rights.

As the leader of the terrorist organization Hizbullah clearly stated above, the fight is on for Iranians to save their nation. It should be noted the challenges facing this ancient people are not restricted to the brutal mullahcracy in Teheran which by its silence has apparently endorsed the recent statements of its creation, the Hizbullah, claiming the Persian people and culture no longer exist.

Iranian heritage also faces extinction abroad since its achievements are either deleted from the pages of history books, or mislabeled under the peculiar “Islamic Civilization” category despite the fact that Western culture owes many aspects of its foundation to the Persian Civilization.