Israel’s reported cyberattack that shut down a major Iranian port was a message to the Islamic Republic that its economic systems were vulnerable to Israeli cyber capabilities and a warning that civilian systems should be left out of the covert war between the two countries.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Israel was behind the May 9 cyber-attack on Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, the largest in the country, which brought the shipping traffic to an abrupt and inexplicable halt for days, generating backups for miles.

The report quoted experts who said the attack was Israel’s retaliation for the April 24 Iranian attempt to penetrate Israeli computers that control water flow and wastewater treatment, as well as a system that regulates the addition of chlorine and other chemicals. The attack was detected and thwarted by the Israeli defenses.

Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, says that the counterattack, if executed by Israel, “is an important message to Iran regarding the vulnerability of key elements of Iran’s economy to Israeli cyber capabilities.”

Israel has also made it clear that civilian systems should be left out of combat, he explained.

“Iran and its proxies continue to pose a main cyber threat in the Middle East,” Yigal Unna, Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate said in June 2019, but “Israel is prepared for cyber threats; we have the capability to respond forcefully to cyber-attackers, and not necessarily on the same vector as the attack.”

Unna presented data according to which the Iranians are among the top five state actors active in cyberspace. The data shows that the Iranians are constantly and extensively active in a wide range of attacks, including attacks aimed at gathering intelligence, attacks meant to shape opinion, and attacks aimed at harming and destroying systems.

Iran is among the few countries that carry out attacks of destruction, especially against the Gulf States, he said.

Israel has developed advanced security protocols, as cyber-attacks on Israel have risen exponentially in the past several years, reaching up to two million attacks against crucial Israeli infrastructure on a daily basis.

Israel’s rise as one of the world’s leaders in cybersecurity has been boosted by cooperation between the military, government, education and private sectors, a level of partnership unmatched in the Western world.

(TPS).