It’s hard to understate how poor Trump’s Iran policy is going

Nine_Ender · Jul 16, 2021

UsualName said:
It doesn’t matter, I highly doubt we could build the international pressure and coalition to bring the Iranians to the table again.
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Certainly when Americans get aggressive in a military fashion it never ends well for anybody. Trump was a dangerous man to the globe thank god he's been reduced to the role of crazy grandpa.

UsualName · Jul 16, 2021

Nine_Ender said:
Certainly when Americans get aggressive in a military fashion it never ends well for anybody. Trump was a dangerous man to the globe thank god he's been reduced to the role of crazy grandpa.
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Of Pompei Magnus, after the battle Pharsalus Pompei escaped and Caesar noted as long as he can be propped on a horse Pompei is still dangerous. Trump isn’t “crazy grandpa” status. He can certainly come back a d get in power again.

Nine_Ender · Jul 16, 2021

UsualName said:
Of Pompei Magnus, after the battle Pharsalus Pompei escaped and Caesar noted as long as he can be propped on a horse Pompei is still dangerous. Trump isn’t “crazy grandpa” status. He can certainly come back a d get in power again.
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No, he's done imo. Wouldn't surprise me if he died actually he's a pretty unhealthy man.

TreeFrogTrader · Jul 16, 2021

UsualName said:
Of Pompei Magnus, after the battle Pharsalus Pompei escaped and Caesar noted as long as he can be propped on a horse Pompei is still dangerous. Trump isn’t “crazy grandpa” status. He can certainly come back a d get in power again.
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Let's include Hillary there too.

Don't be sexist, Man.

Also, no references to propping a horse on Catherine the Great please.

UsualName · Jul 16, 2021

Nine_Ender said:
No, he's done imo. Wouldn't surprise me if he died actually he's a pretty unhealthy man.
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Well I don’t wish that on him. But to be clear the story ends with Pompei seeking help from the Egyptians and them cutting his head off and offering it to Caesar as a gift so there’s that to consider too.

ph1l · Jul 16, 2021

Nine_Ender said:
You also don't get to destroy their nuclear facilities based on the premise of what you think they might do.
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It depends who you are.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3218104/what-is-stuxnet-who-created-it-and-how-does-it-work.html

What is Stuxnet, who created it and how does it work?
Thanks to Stuxnet, we now live in a world where code can destroy machinery and stop (or start) a war.

Josh FruhlingerBy Josh Fruhlinger
CSO | AUG 22, 2017 2:39 AM PDT

computer worm / abstract lines / replication
Ilyaliren / Sandipkumar Patel / Getty Images
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Stuxnet is an extremely sophisticated computer worm that exploits multiple previously unknown Windows zero-day vulnerabilities to infect computers and spread. Its purpose was not just to infect PCs but to cause real-world physical effects. Specifically, it targets centrifuges used to produce the enriched uranium that powers nuclear weapons and reactors.

Stuxnet was first identified by the infosec community in 2010, but development on it probably began in 2005. Despite its unparalleled ability to spread and its widespread infection rate, Stuxnet does little or no harm to computers not involved in uranium enrichment. When it infects a computer, it checks to see if that computer is connected to specific models of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) manufactured by Siemens. PLCs are how computers interact with and control industrial machinery like uranium centrifuges. The worm then alters the PLCs' programming, resulting in the centrifuges being spun too quickly and for too long, damaging or destroying the delicate equipment in the process. While this is happening, the PLCs tell the controller computer that everything is working fine, making it difficult to detect or diagnose what's going wrong until it's too late.

[ Download the State of Cybercrime 2017 report and bookmark CSO's daily dashboard for the latest advisories and headlines. | Sign up for CSO newsletters. ]

Who created Stuxnet?
It's now widely accepted that Stuxnet was created by the intelligence agencies of the United States and Israel. The classified program to develop the worm was given the code name "Operation Olympic Games"; it was begun under President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama. While neither government has ever officially acknowledged developing Stuxnet, a 2011 video created to celebrate the retirement of Israeli Defense Forces head Gabi Ashkenazi listed Stuxnet as one of the successes under his watch.

While the individual engineers behind Stuxnet haven't been identified, we know that they were very skilled, and that there were a lot of them. Kaspersky Lab's Roel Schouwenberg estimated that it took a team of ten coders two to three years to create the worm in its final form.

Several other worms with infection capabilities similar to Stuxnet, including those dubbed Duqu and Flame, have been identified in the wild, although their purposes are quite different than Stuxnet's. Their similarity to Stuxnet leads experts to believe that they are products of the same development shop, which is apparently still active.

What's the purpose of Stuxnet?
The U.S. and Israeli governments intended Stuxnet as a tool to derail, or at least delay, the Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush and Obama administrations believed that if Iran were on the verge of developing atomic weapons, Israel would launch airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in a move that could have set off a regional war. Operation Olympic Games was seen as a nonviolent alternative. Although it wasn't clear that such a cyberattack on physical infrastructure was even possible, there was a dramatic meeting in the White House Situation Room late in the Bush presidency during which pieces of a destroyed test centrifuge were spread out on a conference table. It was at that point that the U.S. gave the go-head to unleash the malware.

Stuxnet was never intended to spread beyond the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. The facility was air-gapped and not connected to the internet. That meant that it had to be infected via USB sticks transported inside by intelligence agents or unwilling dupes, but also meant the infection should have been easy to contain. However, the malware did end up on internet-connected computers and began to spread in the wild due to its extremely sophisticated and aggressive nature, though as noted it did little damage to outside computers it infected. Many in the U.S. believed the spread was the result of code modifications made by the Israelis; then-Vice President Biden was said to be particularly upset about this.

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Stuxnet source code
Liam O'Murchu, who's the director of the Security Technology and Response group at Symantec and was on the team there that first unraveled Stuxnet, says that Stuxnet was "by far the most complex piece of code that we've looked at — in a completely different league from anything we’d ever seen before." And while you can find lots of websites that claim to have the Stuxnet code available to download, O'Murchu says you shouldn't believe them: he emphasized to CSO that the original source code for the worm, as written by coders working for U.S. and Israeli intelligence, hasn't been released or leaked and can't be extracted from the binaries that are loose in the wild. (The code for one driver, a very small part of the overall package, has been reconstructed via reverse engineering, but that's not the same as having the original code.)

However, he explained that a lot about code could be understood from examining the binary in action and reverse-engineering it. For instance, he says, "it was pretty obvious from the first time we analyzed this app that it was looking for some Siemens equipment." Eventually, after three to six months of reverse engineering, "we were able to determine, I would say, 99 percent of everything that happens in the code," O'Murchu said.

And it was a thorough analysis of the code that eventually revealed the purpose of the malware. "We could see in the code that it was looking for eight or ten arrays of 168 frequency converters each," says O'Murchu. "You can read the International Atomic Energy Association’s documentation online about how to inspect a uranium enrichment facility, and in that documentation they specify exactly what you would see in the uranium facility — how many frequency converters there will be, how many centrifuges there would be. They would be arranged in eight arrays and that there would be 168 centrifuges in each array. That’s exactly what we were seeing in the code."

"It was very exciting that we’d made this breakthrough," he added. "But then we realized what we had got ourselves into — probably an international espionage operation — and that was quite scary." Symantec released this information in September of 2010; analysts in the west had known since the end of 2009 that the Iranians had been having problems with their centrifuges, but only know understood why.

Stuxnet documentary
Alex Gibney, the Oscar-nominated documentarian behind films like Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room and Going Clear, directed Zero Days, which explains the history of Stuxnet's discovery and its impact on relations between Iran and the west. Zero Days includes interviews with O'Murchu and some of his colleagues, and is available in full on YouTube.

One dramatic sequence shows how the Symantec team managed to drive home Stuxnet's ability to wreak real-world havoc: they programmed a Siemens PLC to inflate a balloon, then infected the PC it was controlled by with Stuxnet. The results were dramatic: despite only being programmed to inflate the balloon for five seconds, the controller kept pumping air into until it burst.

The destruction of the Iranian uranium centrifuges, which followed the same logic—they were spun too quickly and destroyed themselves—was perhaps less visually exciting, but was ultimately just as dramatic. As the documentary explains, we now live in a world where computer malware code is causing destruction at a physical level. It's inevitable that we'll see more in the future.
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Cuddles · Jul 16, 2021

Nine_Ender said:
Certainly when Americans get aggressive in a military fashion it never ends well for anybody. Trump was a dangerous man to the globe thank god he's been reduced to the role of crazy grandpa.
More...

Cuddles said:

Who could've seen this coming?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/lett...illeys-fight-to-stop-trump-from-striking-iran

”You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran
Inside the extraordinary final-days conflict between the former President and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The last time that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with President Donald Trump was on January 3, 2021. The subject of the Sunday-afternoon meeting, at the White House, was Iran’s nuclear program. For the past several months, Milley had been engaged in an alarmed effort to insure that Trump did not embark on a military conflict with Iran as part of his quixotic campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power. The chairman secretly feared that Trump would insist on launching a strike on Iranian interests that could set off a full-blown war.

There were two “nightmare scenarios,” Milley told associates, for the period after the November 3rd election, which resulted in Trump’s defeat but not his concession: one was that Trump would try “to use the military on the streets of America to prevent the legitimate, peaceful transfer of power.” The other was an external crisis involving Iran. It was not public at the time, but Milley believed that the nation had come close—“very close”—to conflict with the Islamic Republic. This dangerous post-election period, Milley said, was all because of Trump’s “Hitler”-like embrace of the “Big Lie” that the election had been stolen from him; Milley feared it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment,” in which, like Adolf Hitler in 1933, he would manufacture a crisis in order to swoop in and rescue the nation from it.

To prevent such an outcome, Milley had, since late in 2020, been having morning phone meetings, at 8 a.m. on most days, with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in the hopes of getting the country safely through to Joe Biden’s Inauguration. The chairman, a burly four-star Army general who had been appointed to the post by Trump in 2019, referred to these meetings with his staff as the “land the plane” calls—as in, “both engines are out, the landing gear are stuck, we’re in an emergency situation. Our job is to land this plane safely and to do a peaceful transfer of power the 20th of January.”

This extraordinary confrontation between the nation’s top military official and the Commander-in-Chief had been building throughout 2020. Before the election, Milley had drafted a plan for how to handle the perilous period leading up to the Inauguration. He outlined four goals: first, to make sure that the U.S. didn’t unnecessarily go to war overseas; second, to make sure that U.S. troops were not used on the streets of America against the American people, for the purpose of keeping Trump in power; third, to maintain the military’s integrity; and, lastly, to maintain his own integrity. He referred back to them often in conversations with others.

As the crisis with Trump unfolded, and the chairman’s worst-case fears about the President not accepting defeat seemed to come true, Milley repeatedly met in private with the Joint Chiefs. He told them to make sure there were no unlawful orders from Trump and not to carry out any such orders without calling him first—almost a conscious echo of the final days of Richard Nixon, when Nixon’s Defense Secretary, James Schlesinger, reportedly warned the military not to act on any orders from the White House to launch a nuclear strike without first checking with him or with the national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger. At one meeting with the Joint Chiefs, in Milley’s Pentagon office, the chairman invoked Benjamin Franklin’s famous line, saying they should all hang together. To concerned members of Congress—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—and also emissaries from the incoming Biden Administration, Milley also put out the word: Trump might attempt a coup, but he would fail because he would never succeed in co-opting the American military. “Our loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution,” Milley told them, and “we are not going to be involved in politics.”

This account of a behind-the-scenes struggle over Iran involving Milley and Trump—a secret backdrop to the public drama unleashed by Trump’s unprecedented refusal to accept the Presidential-election results—comes from some of the nearly two hundred interviews, with a variety of sources, that I have conducted along with my husband, the Times reporter Peter Baker, for a book on the Trump Presidency that will be published next year. Some of the other details reported here about Milley’s actions have been disclosed in recent days by the authors of two new books about Trump and 2020—Michael Bender, of the Wall Street Journal, and Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, of the Washington Post—and been independently confirmed by me. Milley has not addressed the revelations publicly.

In a statement released on Thursday, reacting to reports about the Rucker and Leonnig book, Trump said, “I never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government.” He added, “If I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.” Trump said he selected Milley for the post only because he wanted to spite his then Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, who, he said, “could not stand him.” “I often act counter to people’s advice who I don’t respect,” Trump noted. The former President posited that Milley, a career military officer, was allowing these accounts to circulate “to curry favor with the Radical Left.”

Milley had been in full-alarm mode since the summer of 2020. On June 1st, Trump had used the general as a prop in his infamous Lafayette Square photo op: Trump had marched through the plaza minutes after it had been violently cleared of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, and following him was Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a pack of his White House advisers, and Milley, who was dressed in combat fatigues, as if at war inside America. Milley, an Irish-Catholic from outside Boston who worships the Constitution and the military’s tradition of political neutrality, considered that photo op his “Damascus moment,” as he would later call it: a few short minutes of misjudgment that would haunt him forever. He considered resigning but instead decided to do his penance. “I’ll fight from the inside,” he told his staff. The following week, during a previously scheduled commencement address, he apologized publicly for taking part in a political display that was completely inappropriate for the leader of America’s apolitical armed forces.

On June 3rd, in the Pentagon briefing room, Esper announced that he was opposed to invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters and said that he tried to remain apolitical in his job. Soon after Esper’s statement to the press, Esper, Milley, and the centcom commander, Frank Mackenzie, were scheduled to attend a White House meeting on Afghanistan. Trump, enraged, lit into Esper before Milley could even sit down. The President went “apeshit” on Esper, Milley told associates, one of the worst such reamings-out he had ever seen. Trump would go on to fire Esper days after he lost the 2020 election. Milley told his aides that he, too, was prepared to be fired, or even court-martialled. In another meeting after Milley’s speech, Trump, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, demanded to know why Milley had apologized; apologies, Trump told him, according to an account that Milley later repeated, are a sign of weakness. “Not where I come from,” Milley replied, as he later told associates. Milley said he had to ask for forgiveness because he was a soldier in uniform who did not belong at a political event. “I don’t expect you to understand,” Milley had said, “It’s an ethic for us, a duty.” (In his statement on Thursday, Trump referenced his anger at Milley’s apology. “I saw at that moment he had no courage or skill, certainly not the type of person I would be talking ‘coup’ with. I’m not into coups!”)

A running concern for Milley was the prospect of Trump pushing the nation into a military conflict with Iran. He saw this as a real threat, in part because of a meeting with the President in the early months of 2020, at which one of Trump’s advisers raised the prospect of taking military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if Trump were to lose the election. At another meeting, at which Trump was not present, some of the President’s foreign-policy advisers again pushed military action against Iran. Milley later said that, when he asked why they were so intent on attacking Iran, Vice-President Mike Pence replied, “Because they are evil.”

In the months after the election, with Trump seemingly willing to do anything to stay in power, the subject of Iran was repeatedly raised in White House meetings with the President, and Milley repeatedly argued against a strike. Trump did not want a war, the chairman believed, but he kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against U.S. interests in the region. Milley, by statute the senior military adviser to the President, was worried that Trump might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley would say.

Finally, on January 3rd, after Trump had flown back from his Christmas vacation at Mar-a-Lago, he convened the Oval Office meeting on Iran, asking his advisers about recent reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear activities. Both Mike Pompeo and the national-security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told Trump that it was not possible to do anything militarily at that point. Their attitude was that it was “too late to hit them.” After Milley walked through the potential costs and consequences, Trump agreed. And that was that: after months of anxiety and uncertainty, the Iran fight was over.

At the very end of the meeting Trump brought up the forthcoming rally of his supporters on January 6th, asking Milley and the acting Defense Secretary, Christopher Miller, if they were prepared for what Trump had already promised, on Twitter, would be a “wild” protest. It was a short conversation, Milley later recalled to associates, no more than a couple of minutes at the end of an hour-long meeting. “It’s gonna be a big deal,” Milley heard Trump say. “You’re ready for that, right?” It was the last time the President would ever speak to his Joint Chiefs chairman.

Just three days later, on January 6th, a version of Milley’s nightmare scenario played out anyway: an attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to stop Congress from ratifying Biden’s victory. Milley had not envisioned it, not exactly—his fears had been largely about street violence, involving running battles between pro-Trump thugs and left-wing opponents that Trump might use as a pretext for demanding martial law. This was the analogy to Germany in the nineteen-thirties that Milley had in mind. When January 6th happened, it wasn’t quite like that, of course. But Milley told others on that awful day that what they had dreaded had come to pass: Trump had his “Reichstag moment” after all.
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TreeFrogTrader · Aug 2, 2021

Howz that Usual Tard Peace Accord lookin' these days?

Y'all know. UT assured me many times over that if we could just get rid of Bibi things would be looking up in Israel and the mideast.

In addition to the almost immediate attack on Israel by Hamas when Bibi left, things are still lookin' dubious. YA THINK?

Iran and it surrogates smell weakness in the White House, BIGTIME!

Ditto for all our enemies of those who wish us ill.

Who is Benny Gantz, you might ask?

How bout the new Defense Minister of Israel for starters.

Not feelin the love there yet but Usual Tard has spoken so I am remaining patient. Not sure the Israeli's, Iran, and Hamas are though.

Gantz urges action against Iran ‘right now’ in response to deadly drone attack
Defense minister warns that Tehran has ‘hundreds’ of UAVs in the Middle East that could be used in more attacks, says Jewish state will remove any threat to it
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gantz...right-now-in-response-to-deadly-drone-attack/

TreeFrogTrader · Aug 2, 2021

Blinken pretending to rattle his sword such as it is.

But, as discussed, Biden is in a tough spot now because Iran smells weakness.

The real question is what Biden will do when Iran raises the stakes from there. Oh, I see. We are going to freeze or seize the bank accounts of some senior dildos in Iran. Yeh, okay.

I am still not seeing that Usual Tard Peace Accord at play yet now that Bibi is gone but I am being patient.

Blinken vows ‘collective response’ to Iran over hit on tanker with Israel ties
Secretary says US coordinating with UK, Israel, Romania and others on response to deadly attack; Johnson says Tehran will have to face consequences of its ‘outrageous’ actions
https://www.timesofisrael.com/blink...-to-iran-over-hit-on-tanker-with-israel-ties/

Cuddles · Aug 2, 2021

word on the street is Israel false flagging tankers now?

Didn't they try that stunt like last year already?

Mongers gonna mong