'Covert Action' and Iran ..."We must try..."

"...now another covert-action program appears to have scored a big success. Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon, a former Israeli military chief of staff, said last week that, as a result of recent setbacks, Iran will not go nuclear until 2014 at the earliest. That's quite a change from earlier Israeli forecasts that Iran could get the bomb in 2011.

Why the extra three years? Mr. Yaalon didn't elaborate beyond the bland statement that "the Iranian nuclear program has a number of technological challenges and difficulties." But it has been widely reported that Siemens computers used to control Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz and Bushehr were infected by a fiendishly clever virus, called Stuxnet, that is hard to detect and even harder to eradicate. Meanwhile, there have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists... While the mullahs blame the Little Satan and the Great Satan for everything under the sun, in this case they are probably right. There has been rampant speculation that the Mossad or the CIA is behind the assassinations (my bet would be the former), and that the U.S. National Security Agency or its Israeli equivalent, Unit 8200, is behind Stuxnet. Whoever is responsible may have scored the most notable victory yet recorded in the brief annals of cyberwarfare. It appears that Stuxnet has managed to delay the Iranian nuclear program as long as Israeli air strikes might have, while avoiding any of the obvious blowback. Hezbollah has threatened to rain thousands of missiles on Israel in the event of Israeli attacks on its Iranian sponsors, but a computer virus doesn't offer an obvious casus belli even to the most fanatical terrorists....

In the case of Iran, the question is whether we'll make good use of the time apparently bought by successful covert action. If the Obama administration spends the next three years trying to push sanctions resolutions out of the United Nations or trying to open negotiations with Tehran, it will accomplish little. Better to ramp up another covert action program - this one designed to help the Iranian people overthrow their dictators.

Of course, Tehran is on guard against what happened with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon - all of which received American assistance. Toppling a regime is far more difficult than impeding a nuclear program or a terrorist plot. It may be impossible. But we must try. Otherwise we risk sacrificing the recent gains achieved by skilled and daring intelligence operatives..."