Tag: iran

Backdoor Survival: What the Iran Conflict Means for Preparedness

Iran protesters burn a U.S. flag.

What The Iran Conflict Means For Preparedness is written by Samantha Biggers over at Backdoor Survival. While the article was written before the results of the missile attacks on US bases in Iraq was widely known, that isn’t really relevant for the article. Some people breathed a sigh of relief when Iran essentially said “We’re done. Take that USA.” But we don’t really know that Iran’s response is over, and it probably isn’t. The explosion/crash of Boeing 737 in Iran shortly after Iran’s statement is suspicious and could be an attempt by Iran to make a larger impact on the US economy as well as well-known US corporation. There were secondary missile attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad by Iran-backed Iraqi militias last night. Cyber threats from Iran continue. So the conflict is not over, and could heat up even more over uranium enrichment.

The conflict with Iran has many people very fearful. To be honest the whole thing has made me do a lot of thinking. I don’t want to go over the politics of the situation with you because guess what: there are a lot of things that all people have in common if they want to stay safe and protect their families from hardship on all levels.

A lot of the things I am going to talk about are things that you may already have covered and honestly should be prepared for anyway. One of the beautiful things about well planned prepping is that you can use a lot of the things that you put back even if you are lucky enough to never experience any major event. As the old saying goes, better safer than sorry…

Click here to read the entire article at Backdoor Survival.

Gatestone Institute: US Policy on Iran Heading in the Right Direction

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-born scholar, political scientist, and foreign policy expert, has written an article over at the Gatestone Institute in which he says that President’s Trump forceful stance on Iran is the right policy for checking the dangerous regime.

Gatestone Institute: Thanks to the President, U.S. Policy Heading in the Right Direction

The critics of President Trump’s Iran policy have been proven wrong once again: Not only have the US sanctions imposed significant pressure on the ruling mullahs of Iran and their ability to fund their terror groups, but in addition, President Trump recently ordered a game-changing military attack that killed both Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near the Baghdad airport.

According to the US Department of Defense, Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

The unexpected death of Soleimani should be regarded as a severe blow to the ruling mullahs. When it comes to authority in the Islamic Republic, Soleimani was considered Iran’s second man after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A staunchly loyal confidante to Khamenei, Soleimani enjoyed enormous influence over dictating the Iranian regime’s foreign policy. Soleimani was not bragging when he wrote in a message to US Gen. David Petraeus:

“… you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.”

Soleimani was appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader to be the head of the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), almost two decades ago. The Quds Force is tasked with exporting Iran’s ideological, religious and revolutionary principles beyond the country’s borders.

As the leader of the Quds Force, Soleimani was in charge of extraterritorial operations, including organizing, supporting, training, arming and financing predominantly Shiite militia groups; launching wars directly or indirectly via these proxies; fomenting unrest in other nations to advance Iran’s ideological and hegemonic interests; attacking and invading cities and countries; and assassinating foreign political figures and powerful Iranian dissidents worldwide.

The Quds Force fomented unrest in Iraq by providing deadly, sophisticated bombs, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that killed many civilians and non-civilians, including Iraqis and Americans.

Under his leadership, the Quds Force was also accused of failed plans to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in the US, and to assassinate then-Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel Al-Jubeir. An investigation revealed that the Quds Force was also behind the assassination of Lebanon’s Sunni Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri…

Click here to read the entire article at Gatestone Institute.

CISA: Alert for Potential Iranian Cyber Attacks

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued an alert to be prepared for possible cyber attacks on infrastructure. It may be a good idea to have some cash on hand and keep your fuel tanks fuel in case a cyber attack were to prevent payment processing systems from working for a time. Be on guard for suspicious email link and attachments. Make sure you have backups of important data in case a cyber response takes the form of a computer virus/worm/trojan that damages or destroys files or filesystems.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is sharing the following information with the cybersecurity community as a primer for assisting in the protection of our Nation’s critical infrastructure in light of the current tensions between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States and Iran’s historic use of cyber offensive activities to retaliate against perceived harm. Foremost, CISA recommends organizations take the following actions:

  1. Adopt a state of heightened awareness. This includes minimizing coverage gaps in personnel availability, more consistently consuming relevant threat intelligence, and making sure emergency call trees are up to date.
  2. Increase organizational vigilance. Ensure security personnel are monitoring key internal security capabilities and that they know how to identify anomalous behavior. Flag any known Iranian indicators of compromise and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for immediate response.
  3. Confirm reporting processes. Ensure personnel know how and when to report an incident. The well-being of an organization’s workforce and cyber infrastructure depends on awareness of threat activity. Consider reporting incidents to CISA to help serve as part of CISA’s early warning system (see Contact Information section below).
  4. Exercise organizational incident response plans. Ensure personnel are familiar with the key steps they need to take during an incident. Do they have the accesses they need? Do they know the processes? Are your various data sources logging as expected? Ensure personnel are positioned to act in a calm and unified manner…

Click here to read the full alert at CISA.

Related:

Iran Fires Missiles at US Troops at Ain Assad Airbase in Iraq