Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions

[Eugen Leitl]

(I treat this as conspiracy theory for the moment, but it's fairly
likely Israel had a hand in this)

http://debka.com/article/21496/

Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 18, 2011, 2:29 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Stuxnet   Iran nuclear   Iran's Revolutionary Guards   missiles   Duqu 

Iran's Sejil 2 ballistic missile.

Is the Stuxnet computer malworm back on the warpath in Iran?

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12 of
the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir
base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer
system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran's
ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36
officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.

(Tehran reported 17 deaths although 36 funerals took place.)

Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as
Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms.

debkafile's military and Iranian sources disclose three pieces of information
coming out of the early IRGC probe: 1.  Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered
Iran's top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of
warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was planned.
The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.

2.  Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation
attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen. The
missile exploded upon an order from the computer.

The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining the
two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two
explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge 52
sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.

3.  Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and
structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the
investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work from.

Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for the
sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad
managed to plant a technician among the missile program's personnel and he
signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory which
they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was
infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing
without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.  It is
the second theory which has got Iran's leaders really worried because it
means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and
Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2
ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission until minute
tests are completed. Western intelligence sources told debkafile that Iran's
supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time when
he announced this week that the explosion had "only delayed by two weeks the
manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which
could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the
occupying regime (Israel)."

Iran needs time to thoroughly investigate the causes of the fatal explosion
and convince everyone that the computer systems controlling its missiles of
the Stuxnet malworm will be cleansed and running in no time just like the
Natanz uranium enrichment installation and Bushehr atomic reactor which were
decontaminated between June and September 2010.

If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months,
according to Western experts - certainly longer than the two weeks estimated
by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.

Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian
computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.

The head of Iran's civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week
that the fight against Duqu is "in its initial phase" and the final report
"which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts
are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could
be susceptible to being contaminated are under control."