Flash drive for the Ayatollahs

In January 2011, Istanbul will host another round of talks on the Iranian nuclear program within the framework of the "six". The previous round, December 6-7 in Geneva, did not bring results. Its results, apparently, did not suit not only Western diplomats, but also Tehran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly dismissed Manuchehr Mottaki, who had headed the Iranian Foreign Ministry since 2005, a few days after Geneva. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, has been appointed to this post as interim. He has a reputation as a constructive compromise politician who knows the West well: a certified nuclear physicist, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Salehi has extensive experience in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It is difficult to say exactly what motivated Salehi's choice, but a series of recent events leads to certain reflections.

In early December, two nuclear physicists, Majid Shahriari and Fereydun Abbasi, were blown up in Tehran. Both of them were driving in their cars to work, when unknown people on motorcycles caught up with them, sealed explosive devices on magnets to the gas tank flap and flew away ... Shahriari died, Abbasi was seriously injured. They were not the first victims of assassination attempts: in January 2010, nuclear physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was blown up in Tehran.

November 23 at the Iranian nuclear center in Natanz, as a result of a computer failure, all centrifuges failed. Even earlier, at the end of September, a virus of unknown origin penetrated the electronic systems of the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, built with Russian help, and put them out of action for almost a day. You can't blame it on hackers. The computer networks in Bushehr and Natanz are of a closed type, an absolute “thing in itself”, with no connection with the outside world, that is, with the Internet. Only a specially designed program could paralyze them, and only an individual who entered closed objects with a “poisoned” flash drive could be the carrier of the virus.

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Ayatollahs received a clear message: for their nuclear plans to go to dust, it is not necessary to start a big war against Iran

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There is little exact information about these incidents, there is a lot of speculation around. But some conclusions are already emerging. The first conclusion is that there is a wave of coordinated actions against Iran's nuclear program. The wave has clearly not yet reached its climax - there will be new incidents. Second conclusion: despite the thick veil of secrecy, Iran's nuclear program turned out to be weakly protected and it was not difficult to "depressurize" it. In Iran, there were people who were ready to act on instructions from outside. And whether they were recruited by the "little Satan" (Israel, in the terminology of Iranian orthodoxies) or the "big" (USA) - time will tell. Conclusion the third. The ayatollahs received a clear message: for their plans to turn Iran into a nuclear power to go to waste, it is not necessary to start a big war - you can achieve the desired result in other ways. And absolutely no one who creates the Iranian atomic bomb can feel safe.

Will pinpoint strikes on the Iranian atom affect the position of Iran, which so far has not shown any intention to compromise? One gets the impression that the Tehran elite is confused. On the other hand, the Iranian leaders cannot fail to understand: the latest tough UN resolution (dated June 9, 2010) against Iran may indeed be the last one. China and Russia have already made it clear to the rest of the Security Council members that they no longer want sanctions.

In 2011, Iran will remain a key international issue directly related to Russia's security. It is all the more strange that in the message to the Federal Assembly, delivered on November 30 by President Dmitry Medvedev, there is not a word about Iran.