Re: Apart from being what most people would call an "Act of war"...
I do hope Israel and the US behave as well when, say some of the hardware at Dimona, or the flight software of the F35 gets a little surreptitious "upgrade."
John Smith 19,
There is a difference here. At least in terms of the F35 software example. The authors of Stuxnet went to considerable trouble to not cause accidents, which they could have and might well have been dangerous. Whereas if you play with flight control software, real aeroplanes are going to fall out of the sky, and land on peoples' heads. Not to mention what it does to the pilots. That is a different quality of interference.
At the same time not only were the US pursuing (successfully) UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program, but they were also offering (along with others) money and sweetners in order to allow Iran to operate a legitimate civillian nuclear infrastructure without proliferation risk.
So it's not like they were acting totally carelessly, thoughtlessly or immorally. It's a reasonable well calibrated, multi-layered diplomatic initiative that may even bear fruit in the talks that are currently going on. And if so, bear fruit without anyone getting killed*. The alternatives probably being worse. Most likely an Israeli air attack on Iran, or a US one - given that most opinion seems to be Israel could only half do the job on its own, and as the US would take so much heat if it happened, they may as well step in and do the job properly. Or Iran getting the bomb - then Saudi also doing so, or some combination of all of them.
Was the whole thing moral? In my opinion,yes. Foreign policy often isn't very nice. For good reasons. You're often steering between various unpleasant alternatives, and trying to push for the least horrible ones. Bombing Iran, in order to stop them aquiring nukes, can plausibly be described as worse than dealing with the consequences of Iran getting them. Particularly as it would probably take a lot of repeat bombing to keep them from just starting all over again. As Iran provides massive numbers of rockets for Hamas and Hizbollah to lob at Israeli civilians and is currently equipping and training Assad's troops in their continuing campaign to massacre their way to a regime survival, they're hardly in a position to complain about a bit of malware.
*I'm assuming here that the Iranian nuclear scientists who've been assinated is down to Israel and not the US. Although it's perfectly possible that they were involved in that too, but it does look more Mossad's style.