Oghab 2 is an Iranian counter-espionage agency set on the task of protecting Iran’s nuclear facilities from a variety of threats including sabotaged parts, spies, defectors, assassinations of nuclear physicists, and cyber warfare. According to the New York Times, Iran has acknowledged that it has been fighting nuclear espionage, and has foiled attempts by Western Powers to recruit spies and defectors to pass secrets out of their enrichment facilities. The West, most likely the USA and Israel, has also tried to derail the nuclear program with a computer virus known as Stuxnet [1]. The New York Times also states Iran has good reason to worry about sabotage all the way back to the Bush Administration, when imported sabotaged parts were found, mostly dealing with the power supplies for the centrifuge machines. Obama has accelerated the program, and the facilities have been having trouble with poor designs, and difficulty obtaining parts due to sanctions imposed by the UN .[2]
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The agency was set up in December 2005 after two foreign agents were arrested at the then secret sites of Parchin and Lawizan. Today the agency is led by Ahmad Wahidi, an important member in the Revolutionary Guards.
The New York Times has reported that the Stuxnet computer worm appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and has delayed the Iranian’s nuclear weapons capability. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran’s progress had been set back by multiple years, possibly until 2015. The worm makes the centrifuges spin out of control and damage themselves while a recorded version of what the normal operations looked like were played back to the plant operators as the centrifuges were being destroyed. The computers of the nuclear facilities are not connected to the internet, so it is likely that an agent uploaded the virus from the inside using a USB port. An air strike from Israel using bunker buster bombs wouldn’t even set the Iranians back as far as the virus did [3] . The US has neither confirmed nor denied any involvement with the Stuxnet virus, but it was likely the Idaho National Laboratory that originally came up with the holes found in the components of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are from a German company called Siemens. People who have analyzed the coding of Stuxnet can see two distinct differences in the coding, which may mean that multiple countries are in on it, meaning America developed it and gave it to Israel, who delivered it to the Iranian facilities (Williams). According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, industrial espionage/sabotage is highly effective, and many industrialized countries are extremely vulnerable to it. China initiated a cyber-attack on Google, and Stuxnet attacked the centrifuges at Nanantz and Bushehr. The NSA, with a budget about eight times larger than the CIA, now has a new division solely dedicated to winning cyber wars and maintaining the national security of the US [4] .
Oghab 2, meaning eagle 2, has to worry about foreign intelligence agencies, mostly Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, assassinating their nuclear scientists. There have been instances of Mossad agents driving up to moving vehicles on a motorcycle, and planting a magnetic bomb to the side of the car, and then driving away making for a highly professional assassination. There have been other suspicious incidents including disappearances, the crash of two planes carrying vital components and personnel, and two labs that have burst into flames. This could be called a full-fledged intelligence war. The USA is trying to destabilize the government in hopes of seeing a change of power, or coup. Arash and Kamiar Alaie, two HIV/AIDS treatment pioneers, were recruited by US Intelligence during a medical conference in DC and were given the mission of destabilizing the Islamic Republic and bringing down the government. A high official, General Ali Reza Asgari, defected to the west by means of Turkey, and has been a huge wealth of information on the nuclear ambitions of Iran [5] .
The P5+1, the UN Security Council plus Germany, wants to let Iran have nuclear power, not nuclear weapons capabilities. The offer is there, but Iranian hardliners are not going for it, and some say that there should be a deadline to take the offer or leave it. P5+1 has been bracing itself for military strikes, and luckily for the world Russia reneged on a contract to sell Iran surface to air missiles (SAMS) that would have guarded their nuclear plants from Israeli jets [6] .