Yahoo News revealed that the CIA has launched a series of covert attacks on the Internet against targets in Iran and other countries since the mandate granted to him by President Donald Trump in 2018, which expanded the agency's powers.

And the news site quoted former US officials that the secret mandate, which Trump granted two years ago, abolished many restrictions that were imposed on the CIA by previous administrations, and gave them more freedom to look at the type of operations and their goals, including that the agency no longer Forced to obtain White House approval before conducting secret cyber attacks.

And unlike the policies of former US presidents that focused the CIA’s work on a specific goal of the country’s foreign policy toward Iran such as preventing it from becoming a nuclear power, a document approved by the US National Security Council and drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provides wider powers to the latter by carrying out activities Secret in cyberspace.

The same sources reported that the new CIA authorities are not only related to piracy to gather intelligence, but also open the way for them to launch online attacks to disrupt the infrastructure of opponents such as cutting the electricity grid supply, or harming petrochemical production units.

Among the most prominent American electronic attacks on Iran was what happened in 2009 when the Israeli-American "Stoknest" virus targeted Iranian centrifuges for uranium enrichment, and that was the beginning of the electronic war between Washington and Tehran.

Yahoo News, the Trump administration granted the CIA sweeping powers in 2018 to conduct more cyber attacks, as agency has targeted countries such as Iran, North Korea, Russia and China with strong penetration campaigns since then # Cyber ​​Security https://t.co/We36X11vEg

- Dr. Mohammed Al-Lawati (@allawatimr) July 15, 2020

Other countries
and Yahoo News quoted a former US official that the decision to expand the powers granted the CIA powers to transfer the battle to a handful of countries considered an opponent of the United States, and includes Russia, China, Iran and North Korea that were mentioned directly in the document approved by the US National Security Council and drafted by the intelligence agency Central.

Another former official explained that the expansion of the CIA's powers allowed it to launch secret electronic attacks on organizations that were previously prohibited, such as the media, charitable, religious, and economic institutions that are believed to work for the intelligence agencies of countries hostile to the United States, and also the individuals associated with the mentioned institutions Previously.

The Central Intelligence Agency has prepared a set of proposals for the administration of former President Barack Obama to respond to Russian cyber interference in the 2016 presidential election, and since those proposals, according to former officials, the publication of pirated information on Russian officials on the Internet, and the destruction of Russian servers.

Days before the CIA launched these cyber attacks on Russia in the summer of 2016, the Obama administration asked the agency to freeze the attacks, and during the early days of Trump's presidency, agency officials had hoped that the president would authorize the attacks, but senior Trump administration officials They were not interested in responding to possible Russian interference in the presidential election.