The tension between Iran and U.S is at an all-time high. And the atmosphere in the two countries is fast becoming dangerous. And both the parties gear up for taking each other out. U.S carried out a cyber-attack after two oil tankers were bombed by a missile near the Gulf of Oman, near Iran. On one hand, Iran has denied its participation in the incident, on the other, U.S provided proof that it was the military group Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC) who was behind the bombing.
Trump’s administration has designated the IRGC, as a foreign terrorist group. But tensions with Iran were already strenuous after Iran withdrew from the nuclear deal it signed back in 2015. And the deal restricted its ability to produce nuclear weapons.
Trump started a policy of maximum pressure after the withdrawal of Iran from the pact. The bombings, and the withdrawal had not yet received a response by U.S. But tensions spiked this past week when Iran shot down an unmanned US drone. This led to the US military striking Iran where it hurt the most.
The US Military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian Weapons system on Thursday. And the hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers. Some associates of the military said that the hack had the approval from Trump. But they spoke with anonymity because of they were not authorised to speak publicly of the matter.
Iran did not take the cyber-attack kindly, and launched a counter attack on US. In the past week, hackers who work for Iranian government are targeting US Government agencies. And they are also targeting economies like oil, gas, finance. And they are also sending waves of spear-phishing emails. It is the cyber-security representatives CrowdStrike and FireEye who are tracking such activities.
John Hultquit, director of Intelligence analysis at FireEye said – “Both sides are desperate to know what the other side is thinking. You can absolutely expect the regime to be leveraging every tool they have available to reduce the uncertainty about what’s going to happen next, about what the US’ next move will be.”
