US has started a cyberwar against Iran that it ‘won’t be able to finish,’ Iranian FM Zarif says

Washington unleashed a cyberwar against Tehran that endangered “millions” of its citizens when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said.

“We don’t interfere in the internal affairs of another country but there is a cyberwar going on,” Zarif told NBC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

The United States started that cyberwar by attacking our nuclear facilities in a very dangerous, irresponsible way that could have killed millions of people.

Zarif mentioned the Stuxnet malware that was used to knock out Iranian nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Some cybersecurity experts and numerous media reports have linked the attacks to the US and Israeli governments; however, both countries denied any involvement.

Tehran’s foreign affairs chief also brought up Operation Olympic Games – the NSA’s supposed covert plan to hack the computers that control the Iranian nuclear enrichment center at Natanz. The US has never acknowledged even the existence of such a plan.

Iranian officials have also accused Washington of cyberattacks on other vital installations, including rocket launch pads. The US, meanwhile, has accused Iran of plotting various cyberattacks on its infrastructure.

“So there is a cyberwar, and Iran is engaged in that cyberwar,” Zarif said. “But any war that the United States starts, it won’t be able to finish.”

The strained relations between the US and Iran have been deteriorating since last year, when Washington unilaterally left the 2015 JCPOA agreement on the Iranian nuclear program and then sanctioned numerous Iranian entities and officials, including Zarif. Washington also later accused Tehran of bombing tankers in the Persian Gulf region and refineries in Saudi Arabia. Iran denies that it was behind either of these attacks.

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