Industrial Sabotage Helped Iran Boost Nuclear Security Expertise: Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The West’s cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear facilities raised the country’s awareness and made its nuclear scientists embark on a new field to ward off more acts of industrial sabotage, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said.
Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency, Salehi said the AEOI owes gratitude to the US and Israel for cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear industry, saying the country was not as vigilant as it is now before the Stuxnet virus attacked its facilities.
In 2012, The New York Times revealed that Stuxnet was part of a wave of sophisticated digital attacks codenamed “Olympic Games,” which US President Barack Obama had ordered against the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities.
The paper also confirmed that the Stuxnet virus was created with the help of a secret Israeli intelligence unit.
Iranian experts, however, detected and neutralized the malware in time, averting an extensive damage to the country's industrial sites and facilities.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Salehi said the cyberattack helped Iran enter into a new field of science for testing various equipment to detect any industrial sabotage.
He further made it clear that the AEOI is pursuing legal action against perpetrators of the cyberattack on the country’s nuclear centers.