DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Does New Malware Target Iran's Nuclear Plant? - Mark Clayton (Christian Science Monitor)
    A cyber worm, called Stuxnet, may be the world's first known cyberweapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target.
    One expert suggests Stuxnet may have already attacked its target - Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.
    Stuxnet employs amazing new tricks, like taking control of a computer system without the user taking any action or clicking any button other than inserting an infected memory stick.
    It targets and infiltrates industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software used to run chemical plants and factories as well as electric power plants and transmission systems worldwide, takes control of the automated factory control systems, and does whatever it was programmed to do with them.
    Ralph Langner, a German cyber-security researcher, described Stuxnet as essentially a precision, military-grade cyber missile deployed to seek out and destroy a real-world target of high importance. "This is a 100% sabotage attack," he said.
    Three top U.S. industrial control system security experts confirmed his findings. "This is the first direct example of weaponized software, highly customized and designed to find a particular target," says Michael Assante, former chief of industrial control systems cyber security research at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory.
    A geographical distribution of computers hit by Stuxnet found Iran to be the apparent epicenter of the infections.
    See also Not the First Cyberweapon - John Markoff (New York Times)
    A remarkable set of events surrounded the 2007 Israeli Air Force attack on what was suspected of being a Syrian nuclear reactor under construction.
    Accounts of the event initially indicated that sophisticated jamming technology had been used to blind the radar so Israeli aircraft went unnoticed.
    Last December, however, a report in an American technical publication, IEEE Spectrum, cited a European industry source as raising the possibility that the Israelis had used a built-in software kill switch to shut down the radar.

Egypt Frees Top Hamas Security Official (Reuters)
    Egypt on Friday freed top Hamas security official Mohammed Dababesh after holding him for ten days for involvement in smuggling and the killing of an Egyptian border guard.
    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said at least 40 members of Hamas and other Palestinian factions remained in Egyptian custody.

Will Castro Free Imprisoned U.S. Jew? - Mary Anastasia O'Grady (Wall Street Journal)
    While Fidel Castro told the Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg that he is outraged by anti-Semitism, what about poor Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor and a Jew, who has been languishing in a Cuban prison since December.
    His crime: distributing cellphones to a handful of Cuban Jews who want to establish contact with the diaspora.
    Is that any way to show love for the Jewish people?
    See also Cuba's Deplorable Human Rights Record - U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) (USA Today)

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Negotiating in the Middle East - How the Other Side Sees It - Mark Silverberg (Hudson Institute-New York)

• As Harold Rhode, recently of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, wrote for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, it is crucial to understand the mindset of our enemies. Dealing specifically with Iran, but implying that the Arab dictators and despots of the Middle East move to the same beat, Rhode concludes that the paradigms that govern U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East today are totally at odds with the paradigms that actually govern the actions of our enemies.
• As Rhode notes: Compromise, as we understand the concept, is seen by the other side "as a sign of submission and weakness" that brings shame and dishonor on those - and on the families of those - who concede. Our efforts at compromise, contrition, accommodation and appeasement are perceived as symbolic of our weakness; and our attempts to find common cause with our enemies merely reinforce their belief that we are "paper tigers," to use bin Laden's term, and easy prey. "It is for this reason that good-will and confidence-building measures should be avoided at all costs," he says, as our Western cultural biases make it easy to misunderstand the true intentions of our enemies.
• Our adversaries - Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah - see "negotiations" and our desire for dialogue as opportunities to "best others, to demonstrate power," and to make certain that we know who is in control. Under such circumstances, good-will and confidence-building measures by the West are interpreted as a lack of strength or resolve.
• As Rhode also notes, in the wake of the Iranian hostage-taking crisis, "Iran put the hostages on a plane less than an hour before Ronald Reagan became president. The hostages left Iranian airspace when Reagan raised his hand and took the oath of office. The Iranian 'students' believed Reagan was a cowboy and feared he would 'level' Tehran....Interestingly, during the hostage crisis, a group of Iranian terrorists also occupied the Soviet Embassy in Tehran. But they quickly left, because Moscow informed Tehran that if the Iranians did not leave the Soviet Embassy within hours, Tehran would be bombed," and they knew the Russians meant it.

      See also The Sources of Iranian Negotiating Behavior - Harold Rhode (Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)