Internet, the new battlefield between Israel and Iran

Technology has had the power to transform current international conflicts, as demonstrated by the latest movements between Iran and Israel.  A cyber-attack completely paralysed the shipping traffic at the Iranian port terminal of Shahid Rajaee on 9 May. The incident caused the computers that regulate the flow of ships, trucks and goods to stop working, collapsing the activity of the port, according to official sources collected by The Washington Post.

The Maritime and Port Organization's director-general said after a cyber attack gained access to Maritime and Port Organization (PMO) systems that "the organization is well protected, but it still needs to continually strengthen and update layers of protection to minimize the risk of a cyber attack". 

For his part, Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Rastad said he had no information on the origin of this incursion, according to the Iranian news agency ILNA. "Currently, the distribution of cargo in the northern ports is good, although the performance of all the southern ports is negative," he said. Although Rastad did not speak directly about the consequences of this attack, a foreign government security official called it "very precise" and warned that the damage was "more serious than described in the official Iranian accounts. 

Teheran acknowledged that its port had been the victim of a cyber-attack, but did not hold any particular country responsible. However, two official sources consulted by the Washington Post have reported that Israel may have been behind this incident. "The attack was carried out by Israeli operatives, presumably in response to an earlier attempt to penetrate the computers that operate Israel's rural water distribution systems," the same newspaper reported.

The aforementioned media has had access to a series of satellite photographs showing kilometres of traffic blockages on the highways leading to Shahid Rajaee port. "Assuming this is true, this is in line with Israel's policy of responding aggressively to Iranian provocation, either cybernetically or through other means," Dmitri Alperovitch, a cyber-security policy expert at Harvard's Belfer Center, told the Washington Post. 

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) in Iran has directly accused Israel of being behind this incident. "The attack did not cause any disruption in the work of the port thanks to the full readiness of the defense units," an Iranian official told this agency.

"The cyber-attack on Iran's port was the Israeli response to the Islamic Republic's attack on the components of Mekorot (the national water company)," a senior official told Israeli television Channel 12. A meeting of Israel's security cabinet last May addressed this issue, according to The Times of Israel. The Water Authority and the Israeli National Cybernetics Authority confirmed "an attempted cybernetic violation in the water command and control systems. It should be noted that there was no damage to the water supply and it worked, and continues to work, without interruption".

Iran and Israel have been engaged in a secret cyber war for more than a decade, according to the Times of Israel. Israeli army chief Aviv Kohavi on Tuesday hinted at the possible connection his country might have with the cyber-attack on an Iranian port facility earlier this month and stressed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would continue to use "various military tools" against all those who go against the country's interests. "We will continue to use various military tools and specialized combat techniques to harm the enemy," he said in a speech at a ceremony marking the change of commander at the IDF Internal Front Command. 

All this while Tel Aviv intensifies its presence in Syria, as confirmed by Kohavi himself in statements collected by the Times of Israel. The country led by Reuven Rivlin considers a threat to its security the fact that Iran supports militias loyal to Al-Asad. For this reason, incursions by Israel into Syrian territory have become a constant, since the beginning of Syria's civil war in 2011. These attacks are often directed against the positions of the Islamic Republic and its allies. 

"An urban environment where the enemy has established himself will not be an attack barricade for us. The enemy chose to distribute missiles and rockets within the villages and made them military targets. Thus, the day the order is given (to go to war), the enemy will realize that he has turned the home front into a battle front, and we will attack him hard," he said, referring to Syria. 

He also noted that while the IDF is prepared to act against its enemies, it does so partly on purely ethical grounds. "The IDF has a moral obligation to defend the nation's citizens from the terrorist armies that surround us, and when the Israeli home front is threatened by thousands of missiles and rockets, we will not hesitate to attack by force to thwart those threats," he said. 

In the same speech, Kohavi did not hesitate to stress that while Israel "does everything possible to prevent civilians from being harmed, the enemy does everything possible to achieve the opposite".  "That is why we will base our operation on intelligence and operational necessity," he concluded. At the moment, Iran is one of the countries most affected by the coronavirus crisis with 122,492 people infected and around 7,000 dead. The uncertainty caused by this health crisis has created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of computer viruses, cyber-scams to steal money from users and even attacks perpetrated between states.