When the US last tightened its sanctions against Iran in 2012, then-president Barack Obama boasted that they were "virtually grinding the Iranian economy to a halt." Iran fired back with one of the broadest series of cyberattacks[1] ever to target the US, bombarding practically every major American bank with months intermittent distributed denial of service attacks that pummeled their websites with junk traffic, knocking them offline. Three years later, the Obama administration lifted many of those sanctions in exchange for Iran's promise to halt its nuclear development; Tehran has since mostly restrained its state-sponsored online attacks[2] against Western targets.
Now, with little more than a word from President Trump, that détente appears to have ended. And with it, the lull in Iranian cyberattacks on the West may be coming to an end, too.
Cutting Swords
President Trump announced Tuesday that he would unilaterally withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015, and impose new sanctions against the country within 90 days. Since then, foreign policy watchers have warned that the move would isolate the US, risk further destabilizing the Middle East, and invite another nuclear rogue nation into the world. But for those who have followed the last decade of digital conflicts around the world, the unraveling of the Iran deal reignites not only the country's nuclear threat, but also the threat of its highly aggressive hackers—now with years more development and training that have only honed their offensive tactics.
"They’ve developed this ability over the last years and there’s no reason for them not to use it now," says Levi Gundert, an Iran-focused analyst at private intelligence firm Recorded Future. "They want to try to induce other countries to think about repercussions before levying sanctions,