In a new round of the back-and-forth going on between the USA and Iran, the US military launched cyber-attacks against Iran in retaliation for the Global Hawk drone that was shot down by the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps a couple of days earlier. According to officials, the attack launched by U.S. Cyber Command targeted Iranian intelligence and radar installations which were used to shoot down the US drone, which is one of the most advanced and costly drones employed by the US military.
These attacks came after US President Donald Trump reportedly sanctioned and then took back the decision of carrying out military strikes against Iran. On his Twitter account, Mr. Trump declared that he called off the strikes 10 minutes before they were scheduled to take place because the casualties inflicted would not be proportionate to downing an unmanned drone.
Naturally, Iran declared that the cyber attacks carried out by the US had failed and did not affect their systems. The announcement by the Iranian minister for information and communications technology, MJ Azari Johrami, also said that Iran had already foiled ’33 million attacks’ over the past year and hinted that they might be open to talks to de-escalate the current situation. Earlier, the US claimed that the drone shot down by Iran was over international waters while Iran claimed that it was over its territorial waters. While these are classic examples of conflicting narratives by opposing parties and the true extent of the attacks may never be revealed to the public, reports do indicate that some Iranian missile installations went offline around the same time that the attacks took place.
These events are just the latest in a prolonged series of dangerous developments between the US and Iran which has brought the two countries to the brink of war on a number of occasions. Most of these are based on Iran’s bid to become a nuclear power and the US’ attempts to foil any such bids by Iran.
