Iran has responded to the Israeli navy sending a submarine to the Persian Gulf. Last week Israel’s military sent a submarine through the Red Sea traveling exposed above the waterline so as to let the Iranian government know that it was on the way. Now the Iranians are threatening retaliation for any hostile acts on the part of Israel.
Abu al-Fadl Amoui, a spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament, told Al-Jazeera Arabic, “Israel must know that our response to aggression against our national security will be strong and massive. Israel is looking for excuses to drag the region into a tension that creates chaos in the last days of the Trump presidency.”
Israeli officials have made it clear that they are prepared to take military action in response to any acts of aggression on the part of Iran.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
Tensions have been mounting in the entire region for months now with some expecting that President Trump intends to make some sort of aggressive move against Iran in his last few weeks in office.
Last month Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was known as the father of the Iranian nuclear bomb, was assassinated in Iran. The Iranians blamed Israeli agents for his death. Seyed Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, reportedly said at the time, “Undoubtedly, the Islamic Republic of Iran will give a calculated and decisive answer to the criminals who took Martyr Fakhrizadeh.”
Iran gave the man a state funeral today in Tehran. Iranian military personnel in full dress uniforms carried his coffin. The Iranians have also claimed to have found the weapon used to kill him and that it bears the logo and specs of Israel’s military industry, whatever that means.
It was also revealed that last summer Israeli agents carried out the killing of Al Qaeda’s No. 2 Abu Muhammad Al-Masri in Iran. The killing was said to have been carried out at the request of the American government. Abu Muhammad al-Masri was accused of masterminding the terrorist attacks on American embassies in Africa back in 1998. The attacks, which took place in Kenya and Tanzania, killed 224 people and wounded many more.
Iran has apparently retaliated against Israel through the use of computer viruses. Check Point software, an Israeli cybersecurity firm, found that the Pay2Key ransomware virus which affected a number of Israeli companies was created in Iran.
The Pay2Key attacks date back to last June. Check Point revealed that this ransomware hits victims at night, after midnight, when a company is not likely to have actively working IT teams. Check Point Software says that by simply following the money the company’s researchers were able to determine that Iran is the origin of the Pay2Key ransomware virus. It did so by watching the bitcoin “wallets” into which ransom paid by some of the victims went.
The same wallets were reused for the ransom payments of different victims. The bitcoins were then transferred to an intermediate wallet and the to a final wallet address associated with a high activity cluster. Check Point used WalletExplorer service to help uncover the location of the final wallet.