Iranian Hackers Attack And Disable An Israeli Internet Company

The day coincided with Cyrus the Great Day, the founder of Iran's ancient dynasty, the Achaemenids, whose empire-building in the 6th century BC was marked with respect for diversity and human rights. His empire expanded from Central Asia and the eastern wing of the Persian plateau and beyond to Mediterranean shores and North Africa.

Cyrus the Great (circa 600-530 BC) Day on October 29 this year was relatively uneventful. However, security measures were deliberately visible in Shiraz, the nearest big city to the monument that is the ancient King's tomb in Pasargadae, some 60 miles into the mainly arid plain northwest of the city. The date was chosen based on estimates that he captures Babylon on October 28 or 29 in 539 BC.

Security police were vigilant in Shiraz since Thursday, questioning anyone who looked like a tourist to make sure that they were not going to visit Pasargadae, said eyewitnesses in Shiraz.

Friday morning, security forces arrested the parents of Navid Afkari, whose unfair trial and execution in 2019 caused havoc in Iran. The elderly parents were arrested with a birthday cake with the face of Cyrus the great painted on it with icing. Reports from Iran say they were released in less than two hours, after being warned to make sure that they will not be part of any demonstration to mark the royal birthday tow weeks before the anniversary of the 2019 protests during which security forces killed hundreds of peaceful demonstrators.

The reason for tight security measures in Shiraz and the road to Pasargadae was concern on the part of the authorities that like previous years, thousands would defy security measures and show up around the ancient King's tomb. The Islamic Republic has shunned Iran's long-standing history of thousands of years of monarchy as if it did not exist as an empire that ruled over most of the known world.

Another reason was that Prince Reza Pahlavi, the heir to Iran's monarchy, sent a message to the nation to mark the day. He called on Iranians: "Remember the name and memory of Cyrus the Great in any which way you can, wherever you are. Show the world that you are a united, freedom-loving and tolerant nation. Every one of you should represent the great ancient nation of Iran. The world should not identify Iran with the ruling criminal cult that is running the Islamic Republic."

The current regime has been in denial of the popularity of Iran's monarchy and national heritage. Some religious zealots wanted to ruin the monuments in Pasargadae and Persepolis immediately after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but people's resistance against fundamentalism did not allow them to do what they wanted.

Nonetheless, as recently as two weeks ago, President Ebrahim Raisi made a gaffe during a visit to Persepolis saying that the monuments were reminiscent of oppressor kings. He made the comment mindless of the fact that Cyrus the Great is internationally respected as a champion of human rights.

In a video posted on social media, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is seen donating some ancient works of art to the United Nations that testify to Iran's leading role as an advocate of human rights thousands of years ago.This was in sharp contrast to the anti-human rights image of the Islamic Republic most recently portrayed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran Javid Rehman.

Last week, when Cultural Heritage and Tourism Minister Ezzatollah Zarghami called for digging water wells around Cyrus the Great's tomb, an act that would harm the monument, social media users such as cultural activist Mohammad Bagher Tabatabai warned Zarghamithat "The tomb of Cyrus the Great has a place in the heart of every Iranian. You can never destroy it."

Outside Iran, former US deputy assistant secretary of state Len Khodorkovsky wrote in an October 29 tweet: "Cyrus the Great is a source of pride for the Iranian people. His legacy of openness and tolerance will outlast the corruption and brutality of the temporary regime in power today, and usher in a new Iranian renaissance. "

During the past years, particularly after the 1979 Islamic revolution and despite the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on pro-monarchy demonstrations, thousands of Iranians rushed to Pasargadae to pay tribute to the great ancient king. The celebration found epic dimensions since 2016. Since 2017, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has deployed forces to the region and blocked all roads to Pasargadae to make sure that the celebrations were not going to happen. But still, hundreds of young men and women somehow managed to gather around the monument and sing patriotic hymns.

In the absence of reliable reports from Iran, particularly about events the government does not want to be highlighted, it is extremely difficult to verify the date and authenticity of pictures that show gatherings around the monument with some paying their respect to Cyrus by kissing his burial ground. The celebration this year may have not been as monumental as previous years, but Iranians trended Cyrus' name as hashtags in Persian and English in the king's remembrance day.

Ratcliffe − who has encamped since Sunday in a tent outside the entrance of the foreign office in Whitehall, London − met Thursday with Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Tulip Siddiq, the member of parliament for Ratcliffe’s north London constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn.

“Going on hunger strike is the absolute last resort for anyone, and Richard told me that he feels there is no other option left, because he feels our government’s response to his wife’s case has been pitiful,” Siddiq said ahead of the meeting.

Ratcliffe went on a 15-day hunger strike in 2019, which he claims led to the couple’s daughter returning from Iran, where she was staying with grandparents.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who had worked for the BBC World Service Trust training ‘citizen journalists’ and for Reuters-Thomson Foundation, was sentenced in April to a year in jail after conviction for spreading “propaganda against the system.” She previously served around two years of a five-year term, following conviction in 2016 on spying charges, before being given a series of furloughs.

Zaghari-Ratcliffelost an appeal against the recent sentence in September. “Instead of threatening to return Nazanin to prison Iran must release her permanently so she can return home,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.

On Wednesday Zabihollah Kohdaeian, spokesman of the Iranian judiciary, said the one-year sentence was final but had not been referred for enforcement.

Ratcliffe insists UK ministers are "too timid" in efforts on behalf of his wife and has repeatedly linked the case to the British government’s failure to repay £400 million ($550 million) owed to Tehran after failing to deliver Chieftain tanks in the 1970s.

Ratcliffe’s disquiet with the British prime minister Boris Johnson goes back to 2017 when Johnson, then home secretary, told parliament that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran, a claim Johnson later retracted but which was cited in the legal case in Tehran.

Ratcliffe has recently charged that his wife’s plight has been considered less important than talks in Vienna designed to revive the 2015 agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear program.

“My criticism of the British government is they’ve not prioritized the safety of British citizens in the course of their nuclear negotiations, in the course of their discussions with Iran and other stuff’s been more important,” he told the BBC.

“Iran conducts its diplomatic business through hostage-taking, in part because it is cost-free,” he told the Guardian 19 September.

Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt told parliament Wednesday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe would not be able to leave Iran until the UK government returned the money paid for the tanks. "When are we going to repay that debt?” he asked.

The Human Rights Activists’ News Agency (HRANA) a monitoring group based abroad quoted “an informed source” on Friday that a court set his bail at 3 billion rials ($11,000) but outside pressures have kept the assailant behind bars.

The Revolutionary Guard colonel identified unofficially as Ayyub Alizadeh, walked on the stage on October 23 during the inauguration of a new governor, General Abedin Khorram, and slapped him hard in the face. The reason for his daring act has never been officially disclosed, but some have said he was angry that Khorram had denied him a promotion.

Official media reported that he was angry for a personal reason unrelated to Khorram. According to HRANA, interrogators are now pressuring him to make a confession along those lines.

The unidentified source told the human rights monitoring group that Alizadeh is under pressure and might have even been beaten to make a false confession.

Despite censorship, Iranian media did report the incident, which was an embarrassment for the Revolutionary Guard.

Ali Baytollahi, the head of the taskforce said Iran has not come up with policies and rules to deal with the disaster, as drought and wasteful irrigation methods are depleting ground water reserves.

Depletion of underground water is one of the main causes for ground subsidence that can threaten not only cities but also agricultural lands.

Iran’s capital city Tehran is facing a serious problem of rapid ground subsidence due to decreasing ground water levels, Intel Lab intelligence an imagery consulting firm reported July 1.

Intel Lab published a series of satellite imagery showing relative levels of sinking ground between January 2020 and April 2021. In some areas the ground has sank up to 25 centimeters or more than 8 inches.

Reports and images showed in early October that international airport and historic buildings in Esfahan are sustaining damage from sinking land, as a result of over-reliance on ground water for agriculture amid recurring droughts.

Baytollahi has said that if Iran does not take serious action now, the country can soon reach a point of no return.

Kayhan, the flagship hardliner newspaper in Tehran, accused Israel and the United States Thursday of launching Tuesday’s apparent cyberattack on Iran’s gasoline stations in a bid to spark protests and riots.

Social media posts from hardliners said parliament should expedite the approval of a bill that will require the government to launch a national intranet − the National Information Network (NIN) − that would reduce the threat of cyberattacks from abroad.

It would also curb access to content deemed undesirable and could not be circumvented by the VPNs used by many Iranians to reach blocked websites.When the authorities shut down the Internet in 2019 during protests, the NIN was used by business for online activities, including cab services.

Tuesday’s attack affected all service stations across Iran, bringing the sales of cheap fuel, accessed through smart ration cards, to a standstill. The problem persisted at some service stations two days after the incident, meaning only unrationed fuel could be sold, at twice the 6 cents a liter price of rationed fuel.

Previous cyberattacks have affected both nuclear sites and Iranian railways.

How Tuesday’s attack was perpetrated remains unclear. Amir Nazemi, a former deputy telecommunications minister and head of information technology organization, tweeted Tuesday that connections within the fuel distribution network were isolated from the Internet. Ali Forouzandeh, spokesman of the oil ministry, also said Tuesday that the system was "offline."

Mehdi Saremifar, a Canada-based science and technology reporter, claimed Tuesday that the attack could not have been orchestrated outside the country. He told Iran International that Iran's gas stations rely on their own antenna and a dial-up connection to transmit data on smart fuel ration cards to the central server of the National Iranian Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC).

"Therefore, this attack was carried out in the closed system of NIORDC,” Saremifar said. “The person who perpetrated the attack probably had security clearance to access [the NIORDC server]… The perpetrator of the attack was from inside the system.”

Afshin Kolahi, head of New and Science-Based Businesses of Iran Chamber of commerce, told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) Wednesday said that while service stations were independent from the Internet, their technology was very outdated.

Kolahi said it would be better to improve security systems that were not vulnerable to Internet attack rather than look at general restrictions of access, even if this suited the general approach of some principlists. "Their major aim is cutting people's connection to the cyberspace outside the country and their access to information," Kolahi said.