General Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, tweeted in Hebrew on Thursday that Tehran had uncovered hostile plans to cause turmoil during a recent purported cyberattack on the Islamic Republic’s petrol stations.
“Even though the first line of the passive defence was disabled by a cyberattack, the back line foiled the enemy's plans to wreak havoc in Iran in a coordinated action on administration, defence and media agencies”, Shamkhani argued.
He added that “the wise methods of October 2021 have revealed the hastiness of October 2019”, an apparent nod to a US cyberattack on Iran that followed a drone strike on Saudi Aramco’s oil processing facilities in mid-September 2019. Washington and Riyadh pointed the finger at Tehran, which rejected the accusations.
Shamkhani was echoed by President Ebrahim Raisi, who praised Iranian authorities’ "vigilance", which he said had stopped hackers from taking advantage of the situation in the wake of the cyberattack.
“Some are aiming to stoke public anger by creating chaos and disrupting people's lives”, Raisi stressed during a Cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday.
Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, for his part asserted that the cyberattack was carried out by a foreign country, but that it was "too early to announce by which country and in which way it was done".
The remarks came as Iranian Oil Minister Javad Ovji said that 3,000 gas stations in the Islamic Republic, crippled by the attack, had resumed operations.
“We apologise to the population and promise to pay attention to similar situations in the future”, the minister said, adding that the "rumours" about the rise in fuel prices following the incident do not correspond to reality.
In April, the Iranian Natanz nuclear plant suffered an incident involving electricity distribution, which the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran described as "nuclear terrorism" and a cyberattack carried out by Israel's foreign intelligence service.
Tel Aviv did not comment on the matter, but then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time that he would “never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel”, adding that the Jewish state would “continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression and terrorism”.
Iran-Israel Standoff
Relations between Iran and Israel have been non-existent since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Tel Aviv, among other accusations, points the finger at Tehran, who, Israel claims, is providing weapons to Damascus as a means of attacking the Jewish state.
Iran denies having a military presence in the Arab Republic apart from advisers sent in at the request of Damascus to help the Syrian government fight terrorist groups.
Tehran rejects Israel's right to exist, frequently vowing to destroy it, while Tel Aviv, apart from accusing Iran of supplying arms to Damascus, has repeatedly pledged to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iranian government insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.