JUST JOURNALISM
Tues. 18 Jan. 2011 @ 13.39 –
On Monday, Middle East news coverage was given over to the story reported in the New York Times – and subsequently picked up by The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian – that Israel and the United States had coordinated in developing the Stuxnet computer worm, now said to have possibly delayed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme for another four years. The implication in all the articles was that an Israeli military strike on Iran was no longer an imminent event. (Just Journalism analysed the UK media coverage of the New York Times story here.)
Cited as an authority in the original article was Dr. Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and the author of The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, a new history of Israel’s undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear weapons programme. Cohen told the press that from what he could tell, and from what his sources had told him, Israel had indeed had a role in constructing and testing Stuxnet.
Just Journalism spoke with Dr. Cohen over email to further elaborate on the Israel-Stuxnet connection.
You told the New York Times that you detect a ‘strong Israeli signature’ on the Stuxnet worm. What did you mean by that?
I meant that Israel has the knowledge, motivation and commitment to engage against Iran in a series of cyber ops. I am not necessarily committing myself about that particular Stuxnet worm itself – it could be a diversion – but I have strong and good reasons to believe that the Israelis are heavily involved in all sorts of cyber ops against Iran in general, and against Natanz in particular. It may be that the US and Israel have run cyber ops against Natanz; just not Stuxnet. That’s what I meant by strong signature.
A few months ago, Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic a widely circulated essayarguing that there was now a better-than-50% chance that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear programme by July 2011. Does Stuxnet’s apparent success alter those odds at all?
I never believed the alarmist story by Jeffrey Goldberg in July – I thought that he was speculating (or led by others to advance a highly speculative view) about issues that were not decided then, and surely much less so today.
One of the lesser-explored themes in the media coverage of Stuxnet is how, if this worm was jointly invented by the United States and Israel, the two countries were in greater agreement as what to do about Iran than they let on. It also puts some of the recent “chill” in US-Israeli relations, as well as Washington scuttlebutt about an impending Israeli strike, in perspective, doesn’t it?
No. I understand that Bush personally approved hundreds of millions of dollars for special covert operations against Iran, with the hope that they would at least buy time and would allow the sanctions to work. Those issues were agreed during the second term of the Bush administration, Obama was briefed about them immediately as he was elected in November 2008, and, I understand, he liked it.
There are separate channels here. Whatever the military intelligence consensus between the United States and Israel is, this does not fully impact political differences, be it with respect to the Palestinian issue or to how deal most effectively with Iran’s nuclear programme.
The New York Times suggested that the worm might have pushed back Iran’s ability to construct a bomb as far as 2015. Do you have a more conservative estimate, or is it really impossible to advance one at this stage?
I think that anybody who suggests a concrete timetable is a fool. I do not take seriously any timetable.
