Iran Feature: A "Son of Stuxnet" Attack Against Tehran's Computers? (Sale)

Facing mounting concern about Iran’s nuclear program, a top U.S. and Israeli technical team has developed a computer “malworm” designed to take down all of Iran’s computer software.

Leaders of the three major software companies, Sergey Brin at Google, Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle have been working with Israel’s top cyber warriors and have now come up with new version of a Stuxnet-like worm that can bring down Iran’s entire software networks if the Iranian regime gets too close to a breakout, according to U.S. intelligence sources. Google, Microsoft and Oracle had no comment on the issue.

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The Latest from Iran (1 August): Brain Drain and a "Brain Tumour"

1650 GMT: Back to the Brain Drain. An EA reader has kindly asked us about the context for our morning report (see 0630 GMT) of an Iranian official revealing that 97% of Iranian Ph.D. students are pursuing their degrees abroad.

The story came from an interview, with the Director General of Home Affairs at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, in Daneshjoo News (Student News).

Subsequently, another official at the Ministry told Fars that the "97%" claim was "not true" because it was taken out of context.

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Pakistan Feature: US Government "Pakistani Intelligence Killed Journalist Saleem Shahzad"

Saleem ShahzadNew classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said.

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US Politics Special: Fiddling While America Defaults?

With four weeks to go before the US faces a possible default on its debt, there is still little sense of how President Obama will lead the country out of the public finances mess the nation faces. It defies belief that the Administration does not have some kind of long-term strategy to ensure that America pays its bills come 2 August, but quite what that plan is nobody outside the Administration could claim to know for sure.

One disturbing possibility to begin considering is that Obama is privy to information that the crisis in America's finances is worse than thought --- his seeming reluctance to get fully involved in the debate is, in fact, a masterful attempt to avoid spooking the markets before a Band-aid can be slapped on the problem. That is pure speculation, but it says something about the ineffectiveness of the President that the only way to take some cold comfort from his performance is to imagine an even worse scenario.

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Pakistan Snapshot: Top US Military Commander "Pakistani Intelligence is Linked to Insurgent Network" (Syed)

Admiral Mike Mullen and General Ashfaq Pervez KiyaniThe US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, was in a mood to name and shame on Wednesday.

Without mincing his words, he made it clear that ISI’s continued links with the Haqqani network were at the core of Pakistan’s problematic relations with the United States.

He said ISI’s relationship with the network was unacceptable to the American leadership.“The ISI has a rich history of how they operated in this part of the world, to protect their own country; I understand that some of the aspects of that we strongly disagree with and that is something that we continue to address.”

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US Politics: Getting Serious on the Federal Debt?

The stakes involved in America's debate over the country's debt crisis were significantly raised last week. Senior lawmakers, and some of the figures involved with the President's deficit reduction commission, have decided that a passive role on the sidelines is no longer a winning strategy for forcing Congress and the White House to get serious about talks designed to solve the debt problem. In an appearance before the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday, Alan Simpson --- one of the co-chairs of the commission --- warned that if the United States did not attempt to deal with the debt burden immediately then, sometime within the next two years, the nation would face its worse economic crisis in history.

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US Politics: Did the Military Manipulate Senators With "Psychological Operations"? (Hastings)

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned ---and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

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Video & Transcript: Obama, Clinton, and Gates on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy Review

The video of President Obama's presentation on Friday of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review. The transcript that follows includes not only Obama's address but also the briefing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

We have already posted the unclassified summary of the Review, along with our snap reaction, "Big Damn Deal". A special analysis will be posted on Saturday:

THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning, everybody.  When I announced our new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last December, I directed my national security team to regularly assess our efforts and to review our progress after one year.

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WikiLeaks and Egypt: Shame About That Internal Repression

Last February, the US Ambassador in Cairo sent this "scene-setter" for the visit of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, to Egypt.

The priorities in the cable are telling. President Obama's heralded Cairo speech, delivered in June 2009, is the platform for Eight months after President Obama's heralded Cairo speech, for "our Strategic Dialogue and...a new framework for regular bilateral meetings with the Egyptians to explore areas for cooperation and coordination, including examining our respective assessments of strategic threats such as Iran".

But wait a minute. Didn't Obama also speak about the merits of open societies, with political participation and respect for all religions? In the 12th of 14 paragraphs, the cable finally notes the internal situation. It opens with the aspiration, "We continue to promote democratic reform in Egypt, including the expansion of political freedom and pluralism, and respect for human rights", and ends with reality: "The GOE has also used the Emergency Law to target political activity by the Muslim Brotherhood, bloggers and labor demonstrators. The Interior Ministry suppresses political opposition through arrests, harassment and intimidation."

(Interesting Postscript: This week, Al-Ahram published an opinion piece from the head of the European Union delegation to Cairo, Marc Franco. Days after the disputed Egyptian elections, Franco enthused, "Looking back over the last few years, it is only fair to say that Egypt has made courageous steps towards promoting a culture of human rights at all levels of Egyptian society.")

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Iran, Sanctions, and War: The Obama Administration Spins Out of Control

Many may perceive the message in Thursday's New York Times article --- again, even though there is no evidence that the "senior Administration official" is presenting an agreed point of view --- as one advocating military action.

That's pretty stupid, given that others in the Administration --- like the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen --- have been trying to talk down the idea of military intervention and have been reminding the Israelis that the US Government is opposed to an airstrike on Iran.

It's not even a sensible political manoeuvre. The Ahmadinejad Government is likely to seize upon this as proof of America's hypocrisy --- they talk negotiations, but they mean conflict --- and unrelenting hostility towards the Iranian people. Rather than fold to the mounting economic pressure that the Administration official envisages, the Government and the Supreme Leader will use this further sign of the "enemy" to try and rally support to offset the economic difficulties.

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