‘Israel sent us dead insects,’ says Iran

The Times of Israel

Tehran accused Israel of sending a “virus-laced letter” containing dead bugs to the Iranian mission at the UN headquarters in New York.

According to an outlandish and unconfirmed report in the semi-official Fars news agency Saturday, Iranian diplomats at the mission received a “letter sealed with an Israeli stamp,” and which contained “a number of dead insects.”

The report alleged that the enclosed note read: “Those who are enemies of Israel will be targeted by virus attacks.”

US officials were called to the supposedly infested scene and “dispatched a team of anti-virus experts” to transfer “the virus-laced letter under special care to prevent any possible infection.”

No Iranian diplomat was hurt in the alleged bug-related incident, according to Fars.

There was no official comment from Israel on the egregious report.

Iran has long believed Jerusalem to be behind a series of cyber attacks on the computer systems of its nuclear facilities, including the Stuxnet and later Duqu viruses, which are said to have significantly impacted operational capabilities in a number of uranium enrichment centers. According to some reports, a number of centrifuges were destroyed by the viruses.

In July, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden charged that the Stuxnet virus was the byproduct of an American and Israeli spy agency project.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, the former NSA contractor said the US spy agency and Israel cooperate on security matters through a branch of the organization known as the Foreign Affairs Directorate.

When asked whether the NSA helped write the Stuxnet program, Snowden said “the NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.”