Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

by Kim Zetter

The subsequent Iran–Iraq war wasn’t kind to the abandoned reactors. Throughout the eight-year war, which ran from 1980 to 1988, Iraq bombed the two towers more than half a dozen times, leaving them in ruins.21 During the war, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard urged the Ayatollah Khomeini to launch a nuclear weapons program to fend off Iraq and its Western allies. But Khomeini refused, believing that nuclear weapons were anathema to Islam and a violation of its basic moral principles. He apparently changed his mind, however, after Saddam Hussein unleashed chemical weapons on Iranian troops and civilians, killing about 25,000 and injuring more than 100,000 others. Incensed by the UN’s passive reaction, and alarmed at rumors that Iraq was seeking to build nuclear weapons of its own, Khomeini decided to revive Iran’s nuclear program. This included developing a uranium enrichment program.