May 30, 2012 | 2:59 am

May 30, 2012

Posted by Shmuel Rosner

Iranian technicians at the Fordo enrichment plant (Photo: Reuters)

Computer Viruses Won’t Stop Iran
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Cyber attacks such as Stuxnet or the newly uncovered Flame virus will only delay the inevitable ‎diplomatic breakthrough or military action on Iran’s nuclear program, writes ‎Jonathan Tobin in Commentary Magazine. ‎

‎[N]o one should be fooled into thinking a virus will ultimately stop Iran’s ‎nuclear program if the regime is determined to persist in its goal. Any ‎technological attack will spawn a defense and a counter-attack. Though ‎Flame may give Israel and/or the West a temporary advantage in the cyber ‎war being conducted with Iran, it cannot by itself or even in combination ‎with other covert activities such as assassinations, solve the problem. ‎

Will Iran Retaliate for the Latest Cyberassault?‎

The Iranian regime is learning from its enemies and could be planning an ‎assault of its own, writes Babak Dehghanpisheh in Time.  ‎

The Iranian government has long anticipated this digital conflict and has tried to ‎assess both external and internal threats. As part of its readiness for this kind of ‎conflict, Tehran has reportedly spent $1 billion to boost its cyber-defense and offense ‎capabilities in recent months. That has included the purchase of sophisticated ‎monitoring software from ZTE, a Chinese telecom company, as well as filling the ‎ranks of the Iranian Cyber Army with tens of thousands of recruits, according to ‎some officials. The Cyber Army is believed to be linked to the Revolutionary Guard.

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When Israel had a champion at the UN

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Peter Collier pays tribute Reagan’s UN envoy Jeane ‎Kirkpatrick, a great friend of Israel who battled the institutionalized anti-Israel ‎sentiment.‎
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Kirkpatrick defended Israel by her unyielding critique of what it faced at the UN. ‎Charging that diplomacy regarding the “Arab- Israeli conflict” at the world body “has ‎nothing to do with peace, but is quite simply a continuation of war against Israel by other ‎means,” she said that the UN, as a result, had become a place where “moral outrage was ‎distributed like violence in a protection racket”; a place where Israel is regularly and ‎routinely attacked for manufactured crimes amidst deafening silence “when 3 million ‎Cambodians died in Pol Pot’s murderous utopia… when a quarter million Ugandans died ‎at the hands of Idi Amin… and when thousand [sic] of Soviet citizens are denied equal ‎rights, equal protection of the law; denied the right to think, write, publish, work freely or ‎emigrate.”‎

Arabs search for stable political systems

Rami G. Khouri of the Daily Star compares the responses of four governments of the ‎Arab world to their peoples’ demands for reform. ‎

Four countries in particular – Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon – capture the ‎different ways that Arab societies have responded to demands for change. None ‎of them has been perfect. The two extremes of political evolution are Syria and ‎Jordan. In Syria, the state and some of the smaller armed opposition groups use ‎extreme violence against civilians, while the majority of opposition supporters ‎demonstrate peacefully for a change of regime. No progress is possible on a ‎dialogue-based reform program because there is no trust between the ‎government and opposition, and international intervention via the United ‎Nations or other means is unable to forge a successful political reform process.

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Time for U.S. leadership ‎on Syria

The editorial board of the Washington Post calls on President Obama to end his ‎procrastination on the spiraling violence in Syria.
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The reality is that the killing in Syria will continue, and the threat to vital U.S. ‎interests across the Middle East will grow, until Mr. Obama stops counting on the ‎likes of Kofi Annan and Vladimir Putin to spare him from the responsibility that ‎should be shouldered by a U.S. president. The longer he waits, the greater the ‎cost — in children’s lives, among other things. ‎

Where the Arab Spring Began

Michael J. Totten of the World Affairs Journal visits Tunisia, where people have opinions ‎on everything from Israel to Stalin.

Tunisia is moderate and even liberal compared with other Arabic-speaking ‎countries, but the place still suffers from a heady case of Israel ‎Derangement Syndrome. More than half the people I interviewed ‎complained about Israel at least once even when I didn’t ask about it. Not a ‎single one of these people - not a one - based their complaint in reality. They ‎were jousting with a fantasy Israel that only exists in their minds. ‎

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