April 15, 2016
In the early days of President Obama’s administration, thousands of American military and intelligence officers worked to develop a plan that could feasibly take down critical infrastructure in Iran, according to a new documentary called “Zero Days.”
The plan was codenamed Nitro Zeus, and if it had ever been deployed, it would have taken down parts of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including its power grid, phone lines and air defenses. The plan cost tens of millions of dollars to design and involved the placement of electronic implants in Iranian computer networks, in case the president decided to order it into action.
The New York Times and BuzzFeed News independently investigated the documentary’s claims. The reports claim Nitro Zeus was created as a contingency plan to be used if the nuclear negotiations never came to fruition or if the US worried Israel would attack Iran’s nuclear arsenal and drag the US into a conflict. The plan was intended to render a conventional war unnecessary, or at least minimize it.
The US also developed a narrower plan that would have taken down Iran’s Fordo nuclear enrichment site, the Times reported. The nuclear facility was apparently high on the priority list for the US and Israel after the Stuxnet virus destroyed 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility. Fordo would have been more difficult to attack. The US plan would have involved the insertion a malicious worm into the facility’s computer system to cut its power.
The New York Times reports that all aspects of Nitro Zeus have been shelved for the time being. Iran has dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges and is banned from conducting most nuclear work there for the next 15 years.
The plan was developed by the Pentagon to assure a US president that he had alternatives to war if Iran moved against the United States or its regional allies.
