With Trump’s approval, Pentagon launched cyber strikes against Iran
Ellen Nakashima
June 22 at 3:23 PM
President Trump approved an offensive cyber strike that disabled Iranian computer systems used to control rocket and missile launches, even as he backed away from a conventional military attack in response to its shoot-down Thursday of an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone, according to people familiar with the matter.
The cyber strikes, launched Thursday night by personnel with U.S. Cyber Command, were in the works for weeks if not months, according to two of these people, who said the Pentagon proposed launching them after Iran’s alleged attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman earlier this month.
The strike against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was coordinated with U.S. Central Command, the military organization with purview of activity through the Middle East, these people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because operation remains extremely sensitive.
The White House declined to comment, as did officials at U.S. Cyber Command. Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said, “As a matter of policy and for operational security, we do not discuss cyberspace operations, intelligence or planning.”
The cyber strikes were first reported Saturday by Yahoo News.
“This operation imposes costs on the growing Iranian cyber threat, but also serves to defend the United States Navy and shipping operations in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Thomas Bossert, a former senior White House cyber official in the Trump administration.
“Our U.S. military has long known that we could sink every IRGC vessel in the strait within 24 hours if necessary. And this is the modern version of what the U.S. Navy has to do to defend itself at sea and keep international shipping lanes free from Iranian disruption.”
Thursday’s strikes against the IRGC represented the first offensive show of force since Cyber Command was elevated to a full combatant command in May. It leveraged new authorities, granted by the president, that have streamlined the approval process for such measures.
Cybercom launched an operation against Russia last fall to deny Internet “trolls” affiliated with the Internet Research Agency the ability to carry out political influence operations on U.S. social media platforms. But the operation against Iran was more disabling.
“This is not something they can put back together so easily,” said one person, who like others was not authorized to speak for the record.
The digital strike was an example, two people said, of what national security adviser John Bolton meant when he suggested recently that the United States is stepping up offensive cyber activity. “We’re now opening the aperture, broadening the areas we’re prepared to act in,” Bolton said at a Wall Street Journal conference.
The United States in April designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in response to its destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.
Iranian cyber forces have tried to hack U.S. naval ships and navigation capabilities in the Persian Gulf region for the last few years. The Strait of Hormuz is a strategically important sea lane through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes daily.
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