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Reuters:
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned U.S. businesses to
be on the alert for a sophisticated Iranian hacking operation whose
targets include defense contractors, energy firms and educational
institutions, according to a confidential agency document. The
operation is the same as one flagged last week by cyber security firm
Cylance Inc as targeting critical infrastructure organizations
worldwide, cyber security experts said. Cylance has said it uncovered
more than 50 victims from what it dubbed Operation Cleaver, in 16
countries, including the United States... Cylance Chief Executive
Stuart McClure said the FBI warning suggested that the Iranian hacking
campaign may have been larger than its own research revealed. 'It
underscores Iran's determination and fixation on large-scale compromise
of critical infrastructure,' he said. The FBI's technical document said
the hackers typically launch their attacks from two IP addresses that
are in Iran, but did not attribute the attacks to the Tehran
government. Cylance has said it believes Iran's government is behind
the campaign, a claim Iran has vehemently denied... Cyber security
professionals who investigate cyber attacks said that they are seeing
evidence that Iran's investment is paying off. 'They are good and have
a lot of talent in the country,' said Dave Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSEC
LLC. 'They are definitely a serious threat, no question.'" http://t.uani.com/1Az6TbV
Reuters:
"Iran has supplied weapons, money and training to the Shi'ite
Houthi militia that seized Yemen's capital in September, as Tehran
steps up its regional power struggle with Saudi Arabia, Yemeni and
Iranian officials say... Reuters has details -- from Yemeni, Western
and Iranian sources -- of Iranian military and financial support to the
Houthis before and after their takeover of Sanaa on Sept. 21... A
senior Yemeni security official said Iran had steadily supported the
Houthis, who have fought the central government since 2004 from their
northern stronghold of Saadah. 'Before the entrance into Sanaa, Iran
started sending weapons here and gave a lot of support with money via
visits abroad,' the official, who declined to be named due to the
sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters. A second senior Yemeni security
official said 'weapons are still coming in by sea and there's money
coming in through transfers'... A senior Iranian official told Reuters
that the Quds Force, the external arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had a
'few hundred' military personnel in Yemen who train Houthi fighters. He
said about 100 Houthis had traveled to Iran this year for training at a
Revolutionary Guards base near the city of Qom... The official said
there were a dozen Iranian military advisers in Yemen, and the pace of
money and arms getting to the Houthis had increased since their seizure
of Sanaa. 'Everything is about the balance of power in the region. Iran
wants a powerful Shi'ite presence in the region that is why it has got
involved in Yemen as well,' said the Iranian official. Salah al-Sammad,
a senior Houthi adviser to the Yemeni president, denied Iran had
provided arms but said Iranian backing was part of a shared vision in
'confronting the American project.'" http://t.uani.com/1yS2VJp
NYT:
"Ms. Moghimi's unyielding optimism, shared by many top
businesspeople here, was dented briefly last month when nuclear
negotiators agreed to a second extension of the talks without even a
framework for further negotiations. But it is almost an article of
faith in business circles that the latest extension is only the postponement
of an inevitable thaw between Iran and the rest of the world. 'The
world needs this deal; we need this deal,' Ms. Moghimi said. 'It will
happen.' Both moderates and conservatives have expressed concerns about
the unchecked rise in expectations, among the public as well as among
elite business classes, that a deal will be cinched. They have been
warning that the enthusiasm could turn to bitter disappointment if the
negotiations, set to resume in Geneva next week, should fail, possibly
touching off unrest or what some clerics call 'another sedition,' a
reference to the revolt that followed disputed presidential elections
in 2009. 'The prospect of a better future is enough to make them forget
their problems for now,' said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst.
'Later, we will see if that state of mind will prove to be costly for
us.' The confidence is beginning to take on a life of its own, with
executives in the major export industries - oil and gas, transportation
and carpets - feverishly preparing for what they envision as gloriously
prosperous days ahead. Meeting with foreign businesspeople at the
conferences that are springing up regularly in Tehran, they are
knocking out memorandums of understanding and other nonbinding
agreements and even some contracts - all with caveats saying sanctions
must be lifted first." http://t.uani.com/1zWgc7K
 Nuclear Program &
Negotiations
AFP:
"Publicly, they are the best of friends working to seal a historic
deal to stop Iran's march to a nuclear bomb. But behind closed doors,
diplomats from France and the United States barely hide their
frustration. For years, France has been viewed as the toughest member
of the group of powers known as the P5+1, after feeling burned in
previous pacts under which Tehran covertly continued to advance its
atomic ambitions... One of France's main concerns is the incomplete
Arak heavy water reactor, which when it eventually comes online could
be used to make plutonium for an atomic bomb. Paris is said to have
pushed for stringent inspections of Iran's nuclear energy program, and
a broad dismantling of facilities and centrifuges... Privately,
American officials say there has been concern in Washington over the
French position of publicly playing hardball, but then not backing up
their words in the negotiations." http://t.uani.com/1qRBLoa
Free Beacon:
"A credible U.S. military option against Iran is off the table and
something the Obama administration can 'no longer even think about,'
according to one of Iran's top military leaders, who claimed in a
wide-ranging interview that Iran has deployed advanced missiles and
satellites capable of tracking foreign militaries. Hossein Salami, the
deputy commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
scoffed at the Obama administration's insistence that a credible
military option exists against Iran and discussed the Islamic
Republic's offensive military capabilities during a wide-ranging
interview on Iranian state-run television... 'We have denied our enemy
any military option,' Salami said in an interview on Iranian television
just days after the Nov. 24 extension in talks was announced. 'The
enemy can no longer even think about a military option.' ... The
military leader went on to provide further confirmation that Iran is
arming Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Relatedly, Hamas officials were in Tehran this week to renew its
anti-Israel military alliance with Iran. 'I am sure that the day will
come-and that day is not far off-when the West Bank will become a
living hell for the security of the Zionists,' he said. 'We shall see
the day when the children of the West Bank and Gaza will hold hands.
Allah willing, that day is near.'" http://t.uani.com/1svb6P9
Cyber
Warfare
Bloomberg
Businessweek: "Most gamblers were still asleep,
and the gondoliers had yet to pole their way down the ersatz canal in
front of the Venetian casino on the Las Vegas Strip. But early on the
chilly morning of Feb. 10, just above the casino floor, the offices of
the world's largest gaming company were gripped by chaos. Computers
were flatlining, e-mail was down, most phones didn't work, and several
of the technology systems that help run the $14 billion operation had
sputtered to a halt. Computer engineers at Las Vegas Sands Corp. raced
to figure out what was happening. Within an hour, they had a diagnosis:
Sands was under a withering cyber attack. PCs and servers were shutting
down in a cascading IT catastrophe, with many of their hard drives
wiped clean. The company's technical staff had never seen anything like
it... The company is still tallying the damage. Documents and
interviews with people involved in Yellowstone 1 show that the hackers'
malicious payload wiped out about three-quarters of the company's Las
Vegas computer servers. Leven, in a brief interview last month before a
private event, estimated that recovering data and building new systems
could cost the company $40 million or more... Investigators from Dell
SecureWorks working for Sands have concluded that the February attack
was likely the work of 'hacktivists' based in Iran, according to
documents obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek. The security team
couldn't determine if Iran's government played a role, but it's
unlikely that any hackers inside the country could pull off an attack
of that scope without its knowledge, given the close scrutiny of
Internet use within its borders. 'This isn't the kind of business you
can get into in Iran without the government knowing,' says James Lewis,
a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington." http://t.uani.com/1zfu2SK
Sanctions Relief
Bloomberg:
"The five-year rally in Iranian stocks is coming to an end as
optimism fades that President Hassan Rouhani can resolve an
international standoff over the Islamic republic's nuclear program. The
Tehran Stock Exchange Index has lost 20 percent in 2014, set for the
first yearly decline since 2008, as petrochemical companies and lenders
plunged, bourse data show. Over the previous five years, shares soared
910 percent, or about 300 percent in dollar terms after factoring in
the rial's declines... The Iranian rial has tumbled about 14 percent
against the dollar in the past year, according to figures compiled by
Daily Rates for Gold Coins & Foreign Currencies, a Facebook page
used by traders and companies in Iran and abroad." http://t.uani.com/13qmhxe
Trend:
"The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) delivered nearly 360
million cubic meters of gas to Iran within swap operations in Jan.-Nov.
2014, a source at SOCAR told Trend... The source said that the volume
of gas deliveries to Iran will reach around 400 million cubic meters by
late 2014. The volume of gas supplies to Iran will reach about 400
million cubic meters before the end of 2014, according to the
source." http://t.uani.com/1wIzAGd
Reuters:
"South Korea's imports of Iranian crude oil rose 6.5 percent in
November from a year earlier, but shipments for the first 11 months of
the year were still below the 2013 average, in line with international
sanction requirements. Preliminary customs data from the world's
fifth-largest crude oil importer showed on Monday that Seoul bought
567,611 tonnes of crude oil from Tehran last month, or 138,686 barrels
per day (bpd), compared with 532,851 tonnes a year ago. Iranian crude
shipments between January and November were 5.65 million tonnes, or
124,012 bpd, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier and 7.5 percent below
the 2013 average of 134,000 bpd, according to the data and Reuters
calculations." http://t.uani.com/1w9NEqv
Terrorism
AFP:
"The Islamic militant group Hamas staged a show of strength to
mark its 27th anniversary Sunday, with a military parade through Gaza
including a flyover by a drone... On the ground, rocket and mortar
launchers trundled through the rain-swept Gaza streets along with
thousands of masked, black-clad and helmeted fighters of Hamas's
military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades... Qassam spokesman Abu
Obeida praised Iran for its support. 'Thank you to all the people and
the countries, first among which is the Islamic Republic of Iran which
did not skimp on money, weapons and other things and provided the
resistance with rockets,' he said in a speech." http://t.uani.com/1BJxAvR
Opinion &
Analysis
Roger Cohen in
NYT: "There is an enormous amount to be done. Mismanagement
has been the curse of Iran. Banks, obliged to make nonperforming loans
to state companies, are largely insolvent. A privatization program was
bungled. There are water shortages. The Internet goes out all the time.
The nuclear program, the object of the overwhelming bulk of attention
paid to Iran, has itself been a colossal exercise in mismanagement,
whatever else it may be: The cost of generating electricity from the
nuclear facility at Bushehr has been beyond astronomical. A young
population is frustrated, tired of Iran's pariah status, and eager to
join the world, as President Hassan Rouhani has promised it will."
http://t.uani.com/1ITpHIW
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear
Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the
Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive
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discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please
email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become
a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons. UANI is an
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