Lately the issue of Stuxnet’s spreading pattern was widely discussed. One issue that still waits for explanation is the high number of infections in India and Indonesia, which we had attributed earlier to Russian contractors. So we did some background research on the Russian-Iranian connection.

What you can read in the references given below does not directly relate to Stuxnet, but it might be more thrilling than your average TV evening programme. For example, in the nineties, Russia proposed building a uranium enrichment plant in Iran. The project didn’t materialize, allegedly because of strong US opposition. The bidder was Minatom, the predecessor of Rosatom, which later entered a strategic partnership with Siemens. Could Russian engineers with their proven excellent Siemens product know-how and deep subject matter expertise in centrifuge cascades have helped Iran with the complex I&C in Natanz? We don’t know, but we’ll find out.

References

Bukharin, O.: Understanding Russia’s uranium enrichment complex. In: Science and global security, 2004

Bukharin, O.: Russia’s gaseous centrifuge technology and uranium enrichment complex. January 2004

Freedman, R.O.: Russia, Iran and the nuclear question: The Putin record.

Islam, T.: Iran’s nuclear policy: Russia’s perspective.

Mizin, V.: The Russian-Iran nuclear connection and US policy options. In: Middle East review of international affairs, March 2004

Peterson, S.: Russian nuclear know-how pours into Iran. In: The Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 2002

Tachovsky, E.: Modern Russian-Iranian relations.

Wehling, F.: Russian nuclear and missile exports to Iran. In: The nonproliferation review, Winter 1999