Iranian officials claim to be enhancing their cyber-warfare capabilities, with announcements in recent days of a new center that will enable Tehran to “fight with the enemy in this arena.” The statements were made at a conference organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), an entity whose President is on the list of newly designated persons and companies in legislation passed by the U.S. Senate last Friday. Iranian infrastructure has been targeted by malware such as Stuxnet and Flame, related pieces of software widely believed to have been developed by Western governments concerned about clandestine weaponization dimensions to Iran’s atomic program, and Tehran has struggled to respond. The Islamic Republic has been much more successful leveraging digital technology to limit the activities of domestic dissidents, tightly restricting Internet access inside the country, and even creating a parallel Internet to prevent access to the outside world.

[Photo: Almonroth / Wiki Commons]