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Iranian cyber warfare commander shot dead in suspected assassination

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The head of Iran’s cyber warfare programme has been shot dead, triggering further accusations that outside powers are carrying out targeted assassinations of key figures in the country’s security apparatus.

Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of the capital, Tehran. Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile programme have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations.

Ahmadi was last seen leaving his home for work on Saturday. He was later found with two bullets in the heart, according to Alborz, a website linked to the Revolutionary Guard Corps. “I could see two bullet wounds on his body and the extent of his injuries indicated that he had been assassinated from a close range with a pistol,” an eyewitness told the website.

The commander of the local police said that two people on a motorbike had been involved in the assassination.

The Facebook page of the officers of the Cyber War Headquarters confirmed that Ahmadi had been one of their commander and posted messages of condolence. But Alborz users warned that the openly accessible book of condolence could harm Iran’s national security.

“Stop giving more information about him. The counter-revolutionaries will take advantage of his murder,” said one post. “It sounds like a hit job for a security officer of this importance”.



Subsequently, a statement from the Imam Hassan Mojtaba division of the Revolutionary Guard Corps said that Ahmadi’s death was being investigated. It warned against speculating “prematurely about the identity of those responsible for the killing”.

Western officials said the information was still being assessed, but previous deaths have been serious blows to Iran’s security forces. Tighter security measures around leading commanders and nuclear scientists have instilled a culture of fear in some of the most sensitive parts of the security establishment.

The last victim of a known assassination was Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemist who worked in the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, who died when an explosive device blew up on his car in January last year.

The death of Ahmadi, a leading specialist in cyber defences, could be an extension of this campaign of subterfuge. Iran has been accused of carrying out a number of cyber attacks detected in the West. Shashank Joshi, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said this was seen as a lesser threat than the nuclear programme. “Iran’s cyber attacks on Israel and elsewhere in the region are a rising threat and a growing threat, but it hasn’t yet been seen as a major and sustained onslaught, so it would be pretty novel and significant to take this step in the field of cyber-warfare at this time,” he said.

The Revolutionary Guard has also been accused of lending its expertise to Syria’s regime, helping it to hack Western targets through a body known as the Syrian Electronic Army.

The killing of Ahmadi coincides with a new diplomatic effort by President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s newly elected leader. He has voiced the hope that Iran’s confrontation with America and the leading Western powers over its nuclear ambitions can be settled within months.


Iranian cyber warfare commander shot dead in suspected assassination - Telegraph
 
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Is Israel Derailing US-Iran Diplomacy With More Assassinations?


The Iranian commander of the Cyber War Headquarters has been assassinated by two unidentified assailants on motorbikes, in a mysterious killing that bears the hallmarks of previous assassinations of Iranian officials that most experts suspect Israel of carrying out.

The Telegraph:


Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of the capital, Tehran. Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile programme have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations.

The last assassination occurred in January of last year, when one of Iran’s top chemists “who worked in the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz” was blown up with an explosive device attached to his car. The incident was met with rising criticism and suspicion of both Israel and the United States. Some even accused the U.S. of being complicit in the killings, which is presumably what prompted U.S. officials to anonymously disclose to NBC News that Israel’s Mossad ordered the assassinations to be carried out by a proxy group, the Iranian dissident group MEK.

Alternatively, CBS reporter Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, a former intelligence correspondent for Haaretz, write in their book “Spies Against Armageddon” that Mossad agents themselves are the ones carrying out the assassinations.

This latest killing, which, keep in mind, is nothing short of international terrorism, comes at an interesting time. Newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made historic diplomatic overtures to the United States and the Obama administration has been somewhat receptive to it, culminating in the unprecedented direct phone call between Rouhani and Obama last week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposes U.S.-Iranian détente, as made clear in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he all but vowed to bomb Iran with or without the U.S.

“Netanyahu will likely dedicate himself to derailing any prospect for a diplomatic breakthrough,” writes Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.

Is this how he has chosen to do it?

Absent somebody blowing the whistle with some hard evidence, we won’t get confirmation of Israeli involvement. Israeli officials will issue their boilerplate, deliberately ambiguous public statements and everybody will just nod, with perhaps some hardline commentators suggesting such actions are legitimate. He was the commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, they’ll emphasize.

The Obama administration has been actively drawing up lists of targets to hit in their ongoing cyber warfare program, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Are the officials carrying out that program fair game for China to covertly assassinate? Of course not. Imagine the U.S. reaction (hint: it wouldn’t be anything like Iran’s non-reaction to these assassinations).

Neither is it legitimate for Israel to continue to murder civilian scientists and government officials in Iran.

If this incident prompts a harsh reaction from Iran’s political hardliners, then it could very well begin to unravel the work that’s been done to thaw the U.S.-Iran relationship. And Netanyahu will get exactly what he wanted (see here for why he wants it).


Is Israel Derailing US-Iran Diplomacy With More Assassinations? « Antiwar.com Blog
 
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RIP, although he was not the commander of cyber force he was just a "karmand"(civil employe) and computer programmer and Iran say that his death is not an assaissination
 
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Talk about cyber warfare... any iranians here member at iran military forum . net? Seems Turks hacked site and shut it down, i laughed my asss off xD.
 
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Why does Iran go on about "revolutionary" this and "counter revolutionary" that ? Didn't the revolution complete itself with the overthrow of their Shah? I mean they even have a "Revolutionary Guard" :D
 
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it's obvious this was an assassination. Iran is trying to say otherwise so they don't appear weak.

anyway, killing one Iranian cyber warfare professional is not going to stop Iran. Iran has many more computer and cyber warfare experts, really this is a pathetic attempt by Israel and other regional foes.


Rest in Peace.
 
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Why does Iran go on about "revolutionary" this and "counter revolutionary" that ? Didn't the revolution complete itself with the overthrow of their Shah? I mean they even have a "Revolutionary Guard" :D
A more correct version of Sepah official name is: Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution

Because of media the name name stuck as Revolutionary Guard.
 
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Why does Iran go on about "revolutionary" this and "counter revolutionary" that ? Didn't the revolution complete itself with the overthrow of their Shah? I mean they even have a "Revolutionary Guard" :D

Because they want to say that we are loyal to goals of revolution. there are still "revolutionary courts" in Iran, and many other organization which their name contains the word "Revolutionary"

btw, what @MTN1917 said is the full version of the name.
 
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By Way of Deception: The Making of a Mossad officer


http://www.conspirazzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/by-way-of-deception-ostrovsky.pdf

In 1990, he published By Way of Deception to draw attention to the corruption and shortcomings he claims to have witnessed in the Mossad. Ostrovsky has repeatedly argued that intelligence-gathering agencies must be permitted certain operational freedoms, but that significantly increased governmental oversight of espionage activities is necessary. Without effective oversight, he has said, the Mossad cannot achieve its full potential and value. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a sayan (pl. sayanim), Hebrew for "assistant", is a term for a Mossad operative recruited from among the Jewish Diaspora to help the Mossad with operations outside Israel, utilising the capacity of their own nationality to procure assistance. A similar assessment has also been reported by a major British tabloid newspaper when it published 'At any one time, up to 50 senior Mossad officers are based in Europe, running a network of thousands of agents loyal to Israel.


Sayanim - Israel's and Mossad's Jewish helpers abroad

Sayanim (sing. Sayan; Hebrew: helpers, assistants) is a term for a Mossad operative recruited from among the Jewish Diaspora to help the Mossad with operations outside Israel, utilising the capacity of their own nationality to procure assistance. While not official Mossad agents and sometimes acting without explicit knowledge, they may work in the capacity of unregistered representatives of the government of Israel in their respective nations.

Generally-speaking, these non-Israeli Jewish volunteers are asked to engage in legal activities that will not bring them into trouble with the authorities. There are exceptions, however, as for example in the case of Jonathan Pollard, the U.S. Naval intelligence employee who engaged in espionage on behalf of Israel's intelligence agencies and whose exposure by the FBI strained relations between the U.S. and Israel.

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad katsa turned author, wrote extensively about activities of the sayanim, as has Gordon Thomas. According Ostrovsky and Thomas, the sayanim provide assistance of various kinds to Mossad officers operating in foreign countries. This assistance can include facilitating medical care, money, logistics, and even overt intelligence gathering. They can be Judges, Court Clerks, Expert Witnesses, Child Protective Service Workers, Assistant District Attorneys, Police Officers, or anyone with a great degree of power over people's lives, and will do anything at the behest of Mossad case officers (katsa) for the State of Israel against its enemies or those perceived to be unfavorable politically to Israeli policy. ("By Way of Deception", Victor Ostrovsky). Sayanim are supposedly not directly involved in intelligence operations, and are only paid for their expenses.

In his book "By Way of Deception", Ostrovsky describes the following examples of services the sayanim might provide using their citizenship or residency status or occupation:

•The operator of a car rental agency can rent a car without completing the proper paperwork.

•An apartment manager can provide an apartment without raising suspicions.

•A bank owner or manager can assist in obtaining, exchanging, tranfering or laundering money.

•A doctor can operate on a bullet wound without making a report.

•Merchants can provide large quantities of their wares or help establish false business fronts.

•Employees in high technology can provide direct information on civilian and military technology. Ostrovsky uses the French Exocet missile as an example of military technology that was compromised in this manner.

Sayanim were reportedly vital to the assassinations by the Mossad in Operation Wrath of God of those responsible for the Black September attacks.

Sayanim must be 100% Jewish. They live abroad, and though they are not Israeli citizens, many are reached through their relatives in Israel.

Ostrovsky claims that for London alone the Mossad has a list of thousands of recruited and willing sayanim.

Gordon Thomas estimates that in the United States and Britain, there are at least 20,000 sayanim who aid Israel's intelligence agencies in a number of ways.

Katsas are in charge of the sayanim, and most active sayanim will be visited by a katsa once every three months or so, which for the katsa usually means between two and four face-to-face meetings a day with sayanim, along with numerous telephone conversations. The system allows the Mossad to work with a skeleton staff. That's why, for example, a CIA station would employ about 100 people, while a comparable Mossad station would need only six or seven.

The existence of this large body of volunteers allows the costs of intelligence gathering to be greatly reduced, and may be one reason why the Mossad operates with fewer case officers than fellow intelligence agencies.


Source:http://www.conspirazzi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/by-way-of-deception-ostrovsky.pdf
 
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