China and Iran have shared a position as cyber-bogeymen over the past year, but a new report from the Wall Street Journal about Iranian infiltration of U.S. energy firms shows why their cyber-assaults could pose a greater immediate threat to U.S. national security.

While China pursues aggressive cyber-espionage campaigns against major U.S. companies and news sources, Iranian-backed hackers are more overtly hostile — targeting critical infrastructure vulnerable to sabotage or engaging in disruptive economic actions, like when Iranian-backed hackers leveraged data centers to wage a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against financial institutions.

From a strategic standpoint, the differences between the Chinese and Iranian strategies make sense. The Chinese government is interested in the long game and is a key player in the global market, while as Tom Kellerman, Vice President of cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, told the Wall Street Journal, “Iran has been successfully ostracized from global economics” so destructive cyber attacks serve “not only empower themselves but to signal to the Western world they are capable in cyberspace.” Proving that capability may be especially important to Iran because its nuclear program was the target of Stuxnet malware, reportedly jointly developed by U.S. and Israeli cyber-forces.

The more recent Iranian-backed attacks go a step further than outside disruptions like the DDoS attacks according to U.S. officials, showing that hackers penetrated the computer networks running energy companies and gained access to the software controlling oil and gas pipelines. With access to that control-system software, hackers could potentially manipulate the flow of fuel, possibly even trigger power outages — something that could have truly devastating national security implications, especially considering that about 85 percent of the energy infrastructure the Department of Defense depends on is commercially owned.

In a March worldwide threat assessment statement to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence identified cybersecurity threats as the top threat facing the United States, specifically noting while “advanced cyber actors” like Russia or China were unlikely to launch a devastating attack on our power grid, but “less advanced but highly motivated actors could access some poorly protected U.S. networks that control core functions, such as power generation, during the next two years.”

A report on the vulnerability of the electric grid released by the offices of Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) last week suggests a substantial number of those networks are poorly protected, with many only implementing mandatory cybersecurity measures from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that are often several years behind the current cyber-threat landscape.

The latest report from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog shows that Iran continues to process nuclear fuel, it is making sure to keep its total amount low enough to not cross Israel’s so-called “red-line.”

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, since its last report Iran has continued to disregard demands that it halt enrichment of uranium at its nuclear facilities, instead processing another 689 kilograms of the nuclear fuel to the 5 percent level. Of greater concern to the international community is the uranium Iran has processed to 20 percent, compromising an additional 44 kilograms since February.

Iran’s known enriched uranium stockpile is not currently usable in a nuclear weapon — for that it would need to be enriched to 90 percent level, making it highly-enriched. However, the technology required to produce 90 percent enriched uranium is a small step from that required to reach the 20 percent threshold. Approximately 250 kilograms of 90 percent uranium is required to create one nuclear weapon, and Tehran seems to have been careful not to reach 250 kilograms worth of 20 percent enriched uranium in its stockpile.

To keep it below that level, Iran has continued its efforts to convert some of its 20 percent stockpile into uranium gas, which are then used in constructing fuel plates. These plates are extremely difficult to process further, making them effectively out of the running for being considered part of any possible weaponization. In the latest IAEA update, Iran reported converting 58 kilograms worth of 20 percent enriched uranium into uranium oxide between the end of September and May. Thus, the IAEA reported 182 kilograms of declared material still in the form of uranium hexafloride.

The report also indicates that Iran continues its efforts to install new centrifuges into its facilities, with nearly 700 installed since the start of the year.

There are also troubling portions of the report dealing with the Agency’s concerns over the Parchin military base. To date, the IAEA has been denied access to the facility, which is suspected to have been involved with earlier regime efforts to design a trigger for a nuclear weapon. Since first requesting access, it appears a cover-up of the facility’s work has been taking place:

55. Since the Director General’s previous report, Iran has conducted further spreading, levelling and compacting of material over most of the site, a significant proportion of which it has also asphalted. There have also been indications of activity within the chamber building.

56. As previously reported, Iran has stated that the allegation of nuclear activities at the Parchin site is “baseless” and that “the recent activities claimed to be conducted in the vicinity of the location of interest to the Agency, has nothing to do with specified location by the Agency”. Iran’s explanation for the soil displacement by trucks is that it was “due to constructing the Parchin new road”.

Iran’s lack of cooperation over Parchin proved a stumbling block in Iran’s ongoing talks with the U.N. over its nuclear program. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano warned back in December that the site could soon be cleared of any evidence that could have been uncovered. The IAEA, which has been issuing quarterly reports on Iran’s nuclear activities since 2003, still concludes though that none of Iran’s declared nuclear material has been diverted towards producing a nuclear weapon.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies also still believe that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon at this time. This has not precluded Congress from beginning to pursue a slew of new action against Iran in recent weeks, with bills in both the House and Senate to increase sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Several experts have questioned the wisdom of ratcheting up sanctions on Iran without end, given the still ongoing pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the stand-off.

A new report out on Monday concludes that the Obama administration should be prepared to contain a nuclear-armed Iran, rather than ignoring such a possibility in favor of its current strategy of prevention.

The Center for New American Security (CNAS) report — titled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran” [PDF] — doesn’t advocate the Obama administration leaving its current policy of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. It does, however, question the logic of not preparing for such an eventuality. “In the absence of a well thought-out strategy for the ‘day after’ Iran gets the bomb, strategic improvisation could produce policy responses that are ineffective or even counterproductive,” the report argues.

In response, authors Colin Kahl, Raj Pattani and Jacob Stokes develop a set of eleven policies they believe should be put into place should prevention efforts — up to and including the use of force — fail. In such an event, the White House should pursue five “key components” to achieve those goals:

• Deterrence: attempt to prevent Iranian nuclear use and aggression through credible threats of retaliation;
• Defense: deny Iran the ability to benefit from its nuclear weapons and to protect U.S. partners and allies from aggression;
• Disruption: shape a regional environment resistant to Iranian influence and to thwart and diminish Iran’s destabilizing activities;
• De-escalation: prevent Iran-related crises from spiraling to nuclear war; and
• Denuclearization: constrain Iran’s nuclear weapons program and limit broader damage to the nonproliferation regime

Having such a plan in place is necessary, the authors argue, given the possibility that even a military strike on Iran — which the Obama administration says remains on the table as a last resort to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran — may not cause Tehran to waver. “Even an operationally effective strike would not, in and of itself, permanently end Iran’s program,” Kahl, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, said in an interview with Al-Monitor. “A strike might substantially degrade Iran’s near-term capability to produce nuclear weapons, but it would almost certainly increase Tehran’s motivation to eventually acquire nuclear weapons to deter future attacks.”

Kahl’s statement tracks with previous reports’ conclusions regarding the use of force against Iran. A Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists report issued last month warned that Iran’s nuclear program cannot be “bombed away.” While Tehran still has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons, according to intelligence from the United States and Israel, U.S. and Israeli officials alike fear that a strike on Iran’s nuclear program could in fact spur them onward to produce a nuclear weapon.

Unfortunately, “containment” has all too often become synonymous with “capitulation” in the current discourse about Iran’s nuclear program, as seen during Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings. However, even the conservative American Enterprise Institute came to the conclusion that the Obama administration should at least consider the possibility of containment. In a 2011 article, the authors noted that containment, while likely difficult, may wind up being the “least-bad choice” on Iran.

While tensions in Syria dominate headlines about the Middle East, a quiet digital battle is brewing in Iran as the June 14 presidential election approaches.

Yesterday, the Basij force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard claimed its websites were being targeted in a wave of cyberattacks:

“Due to the impending vote, elements of the global arrogance have launched a new round of cyberattacks against Basij websites, particularly Basij.ir.”

According to local Iranian news sources, the Basij.ir site was down for part of the day on Wednesday (May 1) and a spokesman for the group claimed its sites faced many attacks in the past three years. However, the Basij is more well known for being the aggressors in cyberattacks. In 2011 it launched a cyberattack against the “enemies” of Iran and has actively recruited hackers to boost its ranks.

Iran had over 8 million internet users in 2009 and online communications including social media and email was key to galvanizing and organizing opposition in the last Iranian Presidential election and the protests that followed. Since then, the regime has cracked down harder than ever on online communications with aggressive surveillance and filtering in what President Obama decried as an “Electronic Curtain” in 2012. Internet access was disrupted before the 2012 parliamentary elections and at other times Iranian authorities have blocked specific web services, such as Google.

While the regime cracked down on tools like virtual private networks (VPNs) many Iranians use to avoid government internet controls in March, hacktivists outside the country are helping provide alternatives to further keep online communications channels open. One group, ASL19 — an interdisciplinary lab named after Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that upholds the right to freedom of expression and access to information — specifically aims to “empower Iranians to communicate freely and engage in dialogue with minimal threat to personal safety.” The group reportedly helps a million Iranians a day avoid network censorship by distributing open source evasion program Psiphon.

But the regime has even been working on an internal intranet, often dubbed the “halalternet” that would be completely closed off from the larger global internet system, and is reportedly very close to being deployed on a broad scale. Chinese technology company Huawei reportedly provided the Iranian government the technological infrastructure for the intranet, and according to Reuters, attempted to sell Iranian internet providers “lawful interception” surveillance tech that they later “acquired.”

Israel Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on Monday made clear that he believes that any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program should be only be considered as a last resort, the latest signal that Israel is moving closer to the United States’ views on how to handle Iran.

Yaalon’s proclamation came during U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s visit to the Middle East this weekend, including his first visit to Israel since his conformation. Hagel traveled to the region in part to finalize an arms deal worth $10 billion, split between the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Speaking to reporters, Hagel said, “I don’t think there’s any question that [the deal is] another very clear signal to Iran.”

Yaalon agreed with the Obama administration’s policy that the “military option” remains on the table for confronting Iran, saying “one way or another Iran’s nuclear program will be stopped.” He also emphasized, however, the importance of such a move only coming should all others fail:

“We believe that the military option, which is well discussed, should be the last resort,” Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told reporters at a news conference with Hagel.

“And there are other tools to be used and to be exhausted,” Yaalon said, listing diplomacy, economic sanctions and “moral support” for domestic opponents of Iran’s hardline Islamist leadership.

In a profile published at the time of his appointment, Reuters highlighted Yaalon’s preference for Israel to follow a cautious approach when determining how to handle Iran, a stance he appears to have brought with him into the Defense Ministry. Yaalon was also listed among the members of Netanyahu’s previous cabinet opposed to launching strikes on Iran in 2011, according to Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Yaalon’s appointment as Defense Minister, given his previous positions on Iran, highlights the shift in Israeli rhetoric in recent months. Following Netanyahu’s so-called “Red Line” speech at the United Nations in October, the drumbeats for war have receded at least slightly. Israeli officials, particularly Netanyahu, have cooled their rhetoric due, in part it seems, to Iran’s continued conversion of its enriched uranium into a form harder to enrich further. But also, as his most recent trip to Israel showed, President Obama has largely succeeded in moving Netanyahu closer to his thinking on Iran since October. “I think there was a policy shift from Netanyahu,” CAP’s Matt Duss said on MSNBC last month, adding that “it’s Netanyahu really climbing down” to Obama’s position.

As Yaalon indicated, all options regarding Iran have yet to be exhausted. Iran on Monday announced it is seeking a new round of talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency over its nuclear program, tentatively scheduled to take place in May. A recent report from The Iran Project also emphasized that there is much the international community can still do to engage Iran diplomatically to end the stand-off over its nuclear program.

A Senate resolution that some believed obligated that the U.S. militarily support an Israeli attack on Iran has now been refined in committee, toning down Congress’s more militaristic approach to the Iranian nuclear program — for now.

In the original phrasing of the draft resolution, as reported by ThinkProgress, the language was vague enough to allow for almost any Israeli use of force against Iran to be immediately and without question backed by the United States with “diplomatic, military, and economic support.” On Tuesday, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) — the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee respectively — won unanimous approval of an amendment to S. Res. 65 that significantly diluted that language.

In the most important section of the resolution — the section previously stating that U.S. policy would be to support Israel in near any strike against Iran — language was added making clear that the U.S. itself must be the sole determinant for when force is used:

Urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence;

The insertion of the word “legitimate” into the clause on self-defense helps narrow the possibility that the measure could be seen as implicitly approving a preventative or pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran. Instead, while the decision to attack would remain Israel’s, the U.S. would decide whether a strike meets its own standard for legitimacy. This is important as, while the resolution was never intended to substitute an actual declaration of war from Congress nor an Authorization of the Use of Military Force as seen prior to launching Iraq War, it will serve as an official statement on U.S. policy.

When Menendez and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) first introduced the non-binding measure in February, it was with the intent that the full Senate vote on it before President Obama’s trip to Israel. Instead, it was met with criticism in the form of pressure from pro-peace groups and even a scathing New York Times editorial lamenting how Congress “gets in the way” of a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

“This new language is the kind of language that should have been in the first version,” Joel Rubin, Director of Policy at the Ploughshares Fund, said about the amendment. “Fortunately the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chose to mark it up, which is relatively rare for this type of resolution, and chose to do it in a way that sharpened up the concerning clause.”

“Americans for Peace Now welcomes amendments made by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to temper [the] problematic Iran-war resolution,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that Corker and Mendendez “deserve credit for dealing seriously and substantively” with concerns about the measure.

The two senators’ offices did not respond to ThinkProgress’ requests for comment about the senators decision to make changes to the resolution’s language.

The amendment doesn’t, however, completely close the door to the future Congressional authorization of war against Iran. Graham, in explaining his thinking behind the original draft of the resolution, readily admitted that it was designed to be part of a “step-by-step” process towards authorizing war against Iran. The Obama administration has still not ruled out the use of force against Iran if deemed necessary to prevent its acquisition of a nuclear weapon, that would only be after the exhaustion of all other available tools.

An editorial in today’s Washington Post gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credit for the Iranian government’s decision to stop short of accumulating enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Back in September 2012, Netanyahu made a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he used a cartoon bomb to illustrate Iran’s nuclear progress, using a red magic marker to draw a line beyond which he believed Iran should not be allowed to progress.

According to the Post’s editors, Netanyahu’s “explicit setting of a ‘red line’ for the Iranian nuclear program… appears to have accomplished what neither negotiations nor sanctions have yielded: concrete Iranian action to limit its enrichment”:

A host of commentators both in the United States and Israel scoffed at what they called Mr. Netanyahu’s “cartoonish” picture of a bomb and the line he drew across it. The prime minister said Iran could not be allowed to accumulate enough 20 percent enriched uranium to produce a bomb with further processing, adding that at the rate its centrifuges were spinning, Tehran would cross that line by the middle of 2013.

Iran, too, dismissed what its U.N. ambassador called “an unfounded and imaginary graph.” But then a funny thing happened: The regime began diverting some of its stockpile to the manufacture of fuel plates for a research reactor. According to the most recent report of international inspectors, in February, it had converted 40 percent of its 20 percent uranium to fuel assemblies or the oxide form needed to produce them. As a result, Iran has remained distinctly below the Israeli red line, and it probably postponed the earliest moment when it could cross that line by several months.

The flaw in this argument: According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran began diverting its stockpile to the manufacture of fuel plates in late 2011, nearly a year before Netanyahu’s speech.

Back in June 2012, IAEA inspectors “verified that Iran converted about 33 percent of its 20 percent-enriched uranium stockpile, according to two senior international officials. Iran used about 49 kilograms (108 pounds) of the 145 kilogram stockpile to make fuel in the form of metal plates for the Tehran Research Reactor.”

This was again confirmed in the IAEA’s August 2012 report, which stated that, “Between the start of conversion activities on 17 December 2011 and 12 August 2012, Iran has fed into the process 71.25 kg” of its stockpile 20 percent enriched uranium. The Arms Control Association’s Greg Thielmann called this “One of the most significant and underreported developments in the August 30 report of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Underreported, perhaps. But you’d expect the editors of one of the U.S.’s leading newspapers to be aware of it.

A new report released on Thursday by a Washington, D.C. think tank says that an agreement with Iran over its disputed nuclear program should include a provision to allow the Islamic Republic to keep civilian aspects of its program in exchange for a “complete lifting” of nuclear-related sanctions.

The report, titled “Time to Move from Tactics to Strategy on Iran” by the Atlantic Council’s Iran Task Force, also recommends more technological, academic and cultural exchanges between Iranians and Americans and to introduce measures to “facilitate trade in food, medicine, and medical supplies.”

At an event at the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Barbara Slavin, the report’s principle author, said that Iranians not only blame their own government for the effects of international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, but they also “blame the United States as well.”

“And I worry very much that we are losing the goodwill of the Iranian people,” Slavin added.

On enrichment, the report, which comes as Iran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany (P5+1) come together for new talks, says that “the Obama administration should lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities.”

But while some have argued that Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium at all, the Atlantic Council’s Iran Task Force, which includes former CIA and NSA Director MIchael Hayden, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright, and former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, implies that a deal with Iran should include allowing it to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, or below 5 percent purity (90 percent is needed for a weapon):

A complete end to nuclear- related sanctions, however, will require a verifiable end to Iranian enrichment beyond 5 percent U-235 and a reasonable understanding of how much low- enriched uranium Iran actually needs for a peaceful nuclear program

That assessment echoes one made recently by two Israeli experts, who said that an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 over the former’s nuclear program should include a provision allowing Iran to enrich low-grade uranium for civilian use. “It is clear,” said Israeli Brig. Gen. (ret) Shlomo Brom last October, “that such an agreement would not be possible without letting Iran having low level of enrichment.”

But the Atlantic Council Iran Task Force report also recommends that some sanctions, mainly ones that hurt ordinary Iranians, be lifted now as a sign of goodwill and to boost “people-to-people” ties. The Task Force says the Treasury Department should designate “a small number of US and private Iranian financial institutions as channels for payment for humanitarian, educational, and public diplomacy-related transactions.” Such a move, said Task Force head and former Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat at the Atlantic Council event today, would “make it hard” for the Iranian regime to blame the U.S. for the tough times Iranians currently face.

The report comes on the heels of another new expert report on Iran from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists says that Iran’s nuclear program cannot be “bombed away” and that diplomacy was the only way to keep it peaceful. “Given the country’s indigenous knowledge and expertise, the only long-term solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is to find a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution,” the report said.