Morris: Israel's Secret War Against Iran

The big question in the Middle East these days is: Who has time on their side?

As Iran races to develop its nuclear bomb-making capacity, we have always assumed that time was on the Ayatollah's side. The Iranian strategy of delay and obfuscation in its negotiations with the West seems to have succeeded in buying Tehran the time it needs for its spinning centrifuges to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb.

The possibility that Iran may acquire advanced anti-aircraft systems from Russia — even though the Kremlin denies it — seems to make the military option of an air strike on Iranian nuclear plants harder and harder for Israel.

But on the West Bank and Gaza, time has always seemed to be on Israel's side. Time to build settlements, time to expand those already there, and — most important — time to wait out Obama's four-year term in office all work for Netanyahu.

Then the worm turned! The Stuxnet worm — a Windows-specific computer worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems. Iran has acknowledged that its nuclear program, the target of the worm, has been damaged significantly.

In fact, some speculate that the worm may take a year for Iran to work through. But, since this is the most important use of cyber warfare thus far in history, nobody can really know its full impact.

When one considers the worm in the context of a cruder form of secret war — the targeted assassination of three Iranian nuclear scientists in recent weeks, the agents of the Mossad may have been very busy! And effective! Who knows?                                    

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