MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. A new round of Iran-Israel escalation may become the first large-scale cyber war in the Middle East, Oleg Akulinichev, deputy chairman of the Russian-Iranian Business Council at the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told TASS.

"Tehran and Tel Aviv have significant capabilities in cyberspace. The confrontation in this field became especially intense after the mass detonation of pagers in Lebanon, which served as a prologue to Israel's invasion of the country to combat the Shiite organization Hezbollah, regarded as Iran's main and most powerful ally in the region," the agency source noted.

The analyst suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to target only Iranian military facilities in response to the October 1 missile strike on Israel may indicate that the Jewish state "will use its cyber capabilities to disable Iranian defense industrial complex facilities, military bases, and air defense systems." On October 14, The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu informed the Biden administration of Israel's intention to strike military targets in Iran, but not nuclear or oil sites.

"Iran may respond to the Israeli cyberattack in a devastating way. The Iranian military has warned that Tehran's new target, following an Israeli strike, would be its critical infrastructure. Missile and drone attacks on such facilities could lead to a high number of civilian casualties, something the Islamic Republic has generally avoided. Therefore, it could opt for a cyberattack on Israeli gas rigs, airports, and oil facilities," the analyst said.

Akulinichev recalled that "Israel was the first in history to use information technology militarily when it attacked Iran's nuclear program facilities with the Stuxnet virus in 2010." He added that Tehran "launched a cyberattack on Israeli air defense systems during a missile strike on Israel in October, which, according to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, allowed Tehran to successfully hit designated targets."

On October 1, Iran launched a massive missile strike on Israel in response to the assassinations of key figures in the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (elite units of the armed forces). Tehran said 90% of the missiles successfully hit their designated targets, while Israel said it intercepted most of the about 180 missiles fired by Iran. Israel Defense Forces General Staff pledged to choose a time and deliver a surprise response to the attack, while Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that strikes on Israel in that case would be even more powerful.