[salimmadjd]

It's strange because one is seen as a retaliation and the other as preemptive aggression. Retaliation is more tolerable than preemptive aggression to many people.

It's very important in this context, because the article goes out of its way to try to point the finger to Iran, but it fails to establish the context. That it was not only attacked on its Nuclear facilities, but also had cyberattack on its oil facilities via the "Flame" malware [0]

Which if this was an Iranian attack makes it a retaliation.

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/flame-virus-hit-iran-s-oil...

[dqpb]

>one is seen as a retaliation and the other as preemptive aggression

I don't think so. This fire has been burning for a very long time.

[azinman2]

How is it a relaliation, which still is far from ethical, if it was to Saudi Arabia, and a non-military building at that?

[abiox]

> How is it a retaliation

well, there is plenty of bad blood and a history of conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Saudi_Arabia_relations

this is just one more event to add to the record.

[azinman2]

But stuxnet has not been attributed to Saudis, but Israel + US, so I’m not following this chain.

[abiox]

saudi is a longtime ally to the us, each offering material support to ther other in conflicts that have involved iran, it's allies or it's interests.

it also seems unlikely to me that saudi intelligence and other forms of support were not utilized in the planning, development and deployment of stuxnet (among other things).

[azinman2]

What about UK? NZ? Kurds? US has many allies, but that doesn’t mean they’re involved in stuxnet. In fact, operationally you’re more likely to fail or leak the more hands you have in the pie. Saudis aren’t known for their technological prowess as much as Israel, so none of this makes sense to me.

[abiox]

there's more than the context of merely being an ally, it's being a "close" ally in the region; one with a history of direct and indirect conflict.

nobody knows if saudi was involved, and i'm not saying they definitely were, but it seems rather unlikely that there was no assistance at least with regard to intelligence and other ancillary-ish things.

even so, the notion of "retaliation" in the scope of clandestine conflict and power struggle is very nebulous, as geopolitics has many layers. if nothing else, saudi is almost certainly a much more ideal target of opportunity than the US due to it's being a nearby direct competitor for regional influence. and even if saudi really had zero involvement with stuxnet (seems unlikely to me), they've definitely had allied involvement with other activities that worked against iran or it's interests.