NYT: Israel Was Behind Cyber Attack on Iran's Fuel System in October

Iran and its arch-foes the US and Israel have regularly accused each other of cyber attacks since 2010, when the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme was hit by the Stuxnet computer virus.

The New York Times (NYT) has cited two unnamed US defence officials as saying that it was Israel who conducted a cyber attack against Iran's nationwide fuel system in October.

The sources recalled that the attack was followed by an Israeli LGBTQ dating site being breached in an intrusion that Tel Aviv attributed to Tehran.

The NYT noted that during the protracted "covert" cyberwar between Israel and Iran, "the targets have usually been military or government related" but that "now, the cyberwar has widened to target civilians on a large scale".

The claims follow an Iranian general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps suggesting late last month that Washington and Tel Aviv could have been behind the 26 October cyber attack that disrupted the distribution of fuel at service stations across the Islamic Republic.

Gholamreza Jalali argued that the attack "technically" resembles two previous incidents whose perpetrators "were unquestionably our enemies, namely the United States and the Zionist regime".

"We have analysed two incidents, the railway accident and the Shahid Rajaei port accident, and we found that they were similar", Jalali said.

In July, the Iranian Transportation Ministry said that a "cyber disruption" had affected its computer systems and website, while in May 2020, The Washington Post reported that Israel had carried out a cyber attack on the Iranian port of Shahid Rajaei in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic route for global oil shipments.

As for the 26 October attack, President Ebrahim Raisi accused the intrusion's perpetrators of trying to turn Iranians against the leadership of the Islamic Republic.

This came after developments in 2010, when the Stuxnet virus, thought to have been engineered by Israel and the US, penetrated Iran's nuclear programme and caused a series of breakdowns in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Israel has repeatedly promised to do its best to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

The two nations have no diplomatic relations, as Iran refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist and threatens to wipe the Jewish state off the map.