By Barbara Opall
June 22, 2015
TEL AVIV — An international war game played out here on Monday showed how a single cyber attack aimed at discrediting Iran could ultimately derail an impending nuclear deal between the world powers and Tehran.
Conducted at Tel Aviv University against the real-life backdrop of the June 30 deadline set by the P5+1 negotiators, the game's scenario devised by Tel Aviv-based Simulations Laboratory & Strategic War-Games (SIMLAB) started with the online publication of sensitive documents leaked from the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The leaker, a former contractor with a US intelligence agency, went public upon discovering that several of the documents contained evidence of a new Iranian centrifuge facility that Tehran had attempted to hide from P5+1 negotiators. Another document presented a demand by Iran's spiritual leader to accelerate activity at the site in order to attain a nuclear weapon in six months, while yet another document detailed a significant Russian military deployment in eastern Ukraine.
Despite denunciations by Iran and Russia that the documents were fabricated, according to the scenario, France announced it would withhold its signature on the pending deal and would resist removal of sanctions against Iran. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko demanded that the EU and NATO help defend it from the "Russian Czar." And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on US President Barack Obama to immediately walk away from a bad deal with the cheating, nuclear-racing sponsor of international terror.
Meanwhile, in Washington, intelligence agencies were scrambling to authenticate the documents, according to the scenario. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned publicly that if, indeed, Tehran had been secretly operating an undeclared facility, that the US would suspend talks and impose additional sanctions.
In the ensuing three hours — each hour representing a full day of intense diplomacy, military posturing and nonstop media coverage on traditional and social networks — experts playing a full spectrum of world actors saw Russia at the brink of war with the West and the nuclear deal with Iran in tatters.
Ultimately, gamers were able to prevent war with Russia, despite the downing of a Russian military aircraft by a cyber attack traced to Israeli technology. They could not, however, halt the downward spiral of events that finally led to collapse of the P5+1 deal with Iran.
Ultimately, gamers discovered that the leaked documents attesting to Iran's hidden centrifuge facility were fabricated; the US contractor who leaked them was duped, the victim of a high-value cyber attack by a Ukrainian hacker team funded by Qatar.
"We decided to create an interested party that wanted to postpone the nuclear agreement with Iran. So we devised a scheme by Qatar, which hired a Ukrainian hacker team to falsify documents and fool the contractor," Adi Dror, SIMLAB manager, told Defense News.
SIMLAB Director Haim Assa, a senior Israeli strategist and an expert in Game Theory, said Monday's simulation demonstrated that it is still conceivable at this late date for opponents to derail the pending comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.
"According to the scenario of the game, Iran didn't agree to inspections of the purported centrifuge facility and this caused a crisis of confidence," Assa said. "In retrospect, it was clear the centrifuge facility didn't exist; the report of its existence was based on false information planted in the course of a cyber attack" for purposes of torpedoing nearly two years of diplomacy.
Assa noted that another major conclusion of today's simulation was the need for an International Cyber Treaty to deal with cyber-based fraud and deception during wartime.
"The purpose of such a treaty is clear: to prevent violent processes as a result of cyber operations... Just as there are international laws of conventional war, there must be a legal basis for laws of cyber war," Assa said.
The war-game launched Israeli Cyber Week and the Fifth Annual International Cyber Security Conference to be held at Tel Aviv University through June 25. Tuesday's conference will feature a policy address by Netanyahu.
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