Brigadier General Ali Fazli justified such attacks by saying that Iran was retaliating for cyber attacks on it. He did not identify what countries had attacked Iran or cite any specific attacks. But it was presumed he was finding the United States and Israel to be guilty of the Stuxnet computer worm attack on Iran.
But Fazli didn’t say the Basij would attack US and Israeli nuclear installations in retaliation. He said they would attack the websites of Iran’s enemies. He didn’t say only government websites would be attacked, just websites in general.
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the Pasdaran—of which the Basij is a branch—boasted that the Pasdaran had already attacked the website of the Voice of America. He boasted that the Iranian Cyber Army, which has been attacking websites around the world for more than two years and putting its logo on hit sites, was part of the Pasdaran. (See Iran Times of March 4, page two.)
The hacking was no surprise, but the fact that Iran admitted it was behind the attack was unique. No government has admitted such attacks before. One of the sites struck by the Iranian Cyber Army was Baidu, the Chinese competitor to Google.
On Sunday, General Fazli said, “As we are targeted by cyber attacks, our cyber forces consisting of experts, professors, students and seminarians will strikes our enemies’ websites.”
The Mehr news agency reported that Gen, Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy chairman of Iran’s Joint Staff, had earlier said that was Iran prepared to take “pre-emptive” action against foreign cyber sites.
And Brig. Gen. Masud Jazayeri, the deputy chief of staff for publicity, said the United States was very vulnerable to cyber attacks. He spoke not of websites, but of infrastructure like the power grid.