If the Stuxnet worm is of Israeli origin [which seems increasingly likely] and America knew of the plan and possibly even collaborated on the execution [one strongly suspects part of that at least true] then does this change my opinion of Obama's Iran appeasement policy? Possibly, not sure - given the extreme sophistication of the virus [when well seasoned cyber war wonks are referring to it as 'incredible' and an 'absolute game changer' you know it's serious shit] but given the sophistication of the project it must have been a long time in the works and therefore any American collusion or participation would have been inherited by Obama from Bush - and so one could see the appeasement initiative as a ruse possibly, which would be interesting - or Obama feeling the impending sabotage of Natanz afforded him the time to play at diplomacy, which would be less interesting and remain vulnerable to skepticism - but I don't know. Remember Bush was criticized on the right for his somewhat soft Iran policy - but I guess we can assume that he too was guided by a wait and see approach since I take it no one could really be sure how damaging the cyber attack would be - Iranian HEU production is down about 25%.
Curious though that the virus showed up first in China and Russia which seems a bit odd since the virus apparently was coded to specifically attack Natanz - now, this probably just a reflection of the enabling role they play in Iran's nuclear ambitions and therefore the vulnerability to infection that goes with that - still, one wonders - the targeted industrial hardware almost certainly came to Iran through China since the company that produces the hardware never sold it to Iran [in fact I believe the selling of it to Iran may be prohibited] - if Israel created the worm they would have to know which hardware was being used - obviously their intelligence services could find this stuff out - still, knowing how much China is investing in cyber warfare, what if this is them running an experiment in large scale industrial sabotage that they can conveniently blame on Israel? Seems rather far fetched - I ain't ruling it out though.
