Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Sunday revealed that the commander killed in a weekend explosion at an ammunition depot west of Tehran was a key figure in Iran's missile program. Gen. Hasan Moghaddam was killed together with 16 other Guard members Saturday at Amir al-Momenin military base outside Bidganeh, a village 25 miles from Tehran. The Guard said the explosion was an accident and occurred while military personnel were transporting munitions. Amir al-Momenin military base is believed to be one of the sites of Iran's nuclear development program, although Iranian officials deny this. According to reports, Moghaddam, whose rank was equivalent to brigadier general, was a key figure in the development of Iranian defense systems. "He was responsible for industrial research that ensured the armed self-reliance of the Revolutionary Guard," according to one source. The Guard praised Moghaddam, saying the military force will not forget his "effective role in the development of the country's defense ... and his efforts in launching and organizing the Guard's artillery and missile units," the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted a Guard statement as saying Sunday. Moghaddam has been called the father of Iran's missile program. He also had strong ties to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist group. Moghaddam served in the Revolutionary Guard for 30 years, fought in the Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980, and was a senior officer in the Iranian armed forces artillery and missile unit. Iranian officials on Monday declared him a shahid (martyr.) Gen. Mostafa Izadi, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, said, "Moghaddam founded Iran's missile program. His blessed ideas helped Hezbollah win the Second Lebanon War, and helped Hamas in Operation Cast Lead." Meanwhile on Monday, theories continued to abound over the source of the explosion. Tehran insists it was an accident, while Richard Silverstein, an American blogger who covers the Arab-Israeli conflict and Jewish-Muslim relations, claimed that an Israeli official, "with extensive political and military experience," personally provided him with exclusive information according to which the Mossad and Iranian opposition group Mujahedin Khalq were responsible for the explosion on the Iranian base. Silverstein wrote that intelligence groups throughout the world are aware of Israeli-Khalq collaboration. Meanwhile, TIME magazine on Sunday quoted an unnamed Western intelligence source insisting that Mossad was behind the blast. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official told TIME, before saying of Israel's ability to inflict further damage, "There are more bullets in the magazine." In an interview on Army Radio on Sunday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he does not know how much damage was caused by the explosion, but added, "may there be more of them." For his part, the Iranian Defense Minister Ahmed Vahidi threatened Israel, saying, "A confrontation between the Zionist regime and a power like Iran is suicide." Reactions to IAEA report Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that Iran is closer than ever to possessing an atomic weapon, and that the recently released International Atomic Energy Agency report did not reveal the full extent of Tehran's nuclear program. The IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, released a damning report on Nov. 8 including the strongest evidence yet that Iran's nuclear program is military in nature. "Iran is closer to getting an [atomic] bomb than is thought," Netanyahu told the cabinet. "Only things that could be proven were written [in the U.N. report], but in reality there are many other things that we see," Netanyahu said. Russia and China must come on board for another round of crippling sanctions against Iran, Netanyahu said, adding that the world "must work determinedly to prevent the danger, and decide what must be done to stop Iran." Iran continues to deny the findings of the IAEA report. Ali Larijani, the Iranian parliament speaker and an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the IAEA follows instructions issued by the U.S. and Israel, and Iran "needs to reassess its cooperation with the agency." Members of Iran's parliament also threatened to withdraw Iran from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. Son of former Revolutionary Guard commander found dead in Dubai hotel Meanwhile, one day before the explosion at the Iranian military base, Mohsen Rezaee, the son of former senior Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaee, was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai. Rezaee, 31, was found with his wrists slit. Autopsy results are expected on Tuesday. His death was believed to be a suicide, but according to the Tabnak website, which is believed to be affiliated with Rezaee's father, his death is suspicious. Rezaee emigrated to the U.S. in 1998, from where he openly criticized his father and the Islamic regime in Iran. Rezaee returned to Iran in 2003, only to leave again two years later. Rezaee's father, who ran in Iran's presidential elections in 2009, is conservative and considered a close adviser to Khamenei. In 2006, an international warrant for his arrest was issued for his suspected involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Iran admits new virus attacked computers
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Iran on Monday admitted that a new computer virus, "Duqu," had indeed attacked computer systems across the country, but officials said that Tehran had developed a program to neutralize the malware.
Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran's civil defense, told IRNA news agency, "The process of controlling and neutralizing the virus has been completed, and organizations have regained control of their systems." According to Jalali, a special unit responsible for combating cyber attacks operates 24 hours a day.
The "Duqu" virus, which takes advantage of a Microsoft Windows security weakness, was discovered last month when it attacked computers in several countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, and India.
Last year, the "Stuxnet" virus attacked Iranian control and supervision computer systems manufactured by Siemens. The virus affected centrifuges in the Natanz uranium enrichment plant and computer systems in the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The New York Times reported in January that Israel and the U.S. collaborated to produce and distribute that computer worm, an assertion neither country has confirmed.
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