Fugitive US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden said the United States and the Zionist entity created the Stuxnet computer virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program

Fugitive US surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden said the United States and the Zionist entity created the Stuxnet computer virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program.

In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel published on Monday, Snowden said the US National Security Agency and Israel “co-wrote” the malware to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear facility networks in 2009 and 2010.

The whistleblower said that the virus was used to change the speed of thousands of gas-spinning centrifuges.

Snowden said that the NSA has a “massive body” called the Foreign Affairs Directorate, through which it cooperates with other entities like Israel on security matters.

Earlier in March 2013, a research by a group of independent legal experts at the request of NATO described the cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities as an “act of force.” “Acts that kill or injure persons or destroy or damage objects are unambiguously uses of force” and likely violate international law, the research read.

Iranian experts detected and neutralized the malware in time, averting any extensive damage to the country's industrial sites and resources.

In June 2012, The New York Times revealed that US President Barack Obama had secretly ordered the cyber attack with the Stuxnet computer virus.

In addition, a report published by the Washington Post in the same month said that the US and Israel had jointly created the computer virus Flame -- a Stuxnet-like espionage malware -- to spy on Iran.