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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and new U.S. President Donald Trump, seizing on an Iranian missile test, are nearing common ground on a tougher U.S. policy towards Tehran ahead of their first face-to-face talks at the White House.

But people familiar with the Trump administration's thinking say that its evolving strategy is likely to be aimed not at dismantling Iran's July 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers, as presidential candidate Trump sometimes advocated, but tightening its enforcement and pressuring the Islamic Republic into renegotiating key provisions.

Options under consideration, they say, would include wider scrutiny of Iran's compliance by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, including access to Iranian military sites, and seeking to remove "sunset" terms that allow some curbs on Iranian nuclear activity to start expiring in 10 years and lift other limits after 15 years.

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In a shift of position for Netanyahu, all signs in Israel point to him being on board with the emerging U.S. plan, though it may prove impossible to get other world powers and Iran to consider revising the landmark nuclear deal.

Two years ago, Netanyahu infuriated the Obama White House by addressing the U.S. Congress to rally hawkish opposition to a budding Iran pact he condemned as a "historic mistake" that should be torn up.

As Trump and Netanyahu prepare for their Feb. 15 meeting, focus has shifted to Iran's ballistic missile test last week.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to members of the diplomatic corps in Israel in the Yad Vashem Synagogue, January 26, 2017, in Jerusalem, Israel. Lior Mizrahi/Getty

The White House said the missile launch was not a direct breach of the nuclear deal but "violates the spirit of that". Trump responded by slapping fresh sanctions on individuals and entities, some of them linked to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

A U.N. Security Council resolution underpinning the nuclear pact urges Iran to refrain from testing missiles designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads, but imposes no obligation.

However, Trump tweeted, "Iran is playing with fire" and "they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, warned that Washington "would no longer tolerate Iran's provocations." Netanyahu "appreciated" the comments.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, on Tuesday dismissed the U.S. decision to put Iran "on notice" over its missile tests and called Trump the "real face" of American corruption. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying Iran would not renegotiate the nuclear deal.

Meeting of Minds Over Missle Test

Beyond the rhetoric, the missile test gave the new Republican president and the conservative Israeli leader - who had an often acrimonious relationship with Trump's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama - an early chance to show they are on the same page in seeking to restrain Iranian military ambitions.

Netanyahu wrote on Facebook last week: "At my upcoming meeting with President Trump in Washington, I intend to raise the renewal of sanctions against Iran in this context and in other contexts. Iranian aggression must not go unanswered."

In London for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday, Netanyahu said "responsible" nations should follow Trump's imposition of new sanctions as Iran remained a deadly menace to Israel and "threatens the world".

But he stopped short of any call to cancel the nuclear accord. Israeli officials privately acknowledged that he would not advocate ripping up a deal that has been emphatically reaffirmed by the other big power signatories - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - since Trump's election victory.

Russia said on Monday it disagreed with Trump's assessment of Iran as "the number one terrorist state" and a Russian diplomat said any move to rework the nuclear pact would inflame Middle East tensions. "Don't try to fix what is not broken," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Trump's stance could weaken the hand of pragmatists in Tehran who have been willing to negotiate a detente with the West after decades of volatile confrontation, a former senior Iranian official said.

Under the accord, Tehran received relief from global economic sanctions and in return committed to capping its uranium enrichment well below the level needed for bomb-grade material, cutting the number of its centrifuge enrichment machines by two-thirds, reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and submitting to a more intrusive IAEA inspections regime.

Diplomats close to the IAEA consider the deal a success so far, voicing little concern with overall Iranian compliance - despite Netanyahu's insistence that it will only pave the Islamic Republic's path towards nuclear weapons once major restrictions expire 15 years after its signing.

Pressure Points Other Than Scrapping Deal

With German, French and British firms busy cultivating new business with Iran, Washington's peers in the six-power group almost surely would rebuff any U.S. thrust to reopen the deal.

Daniel Shapiro, who recently ended his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Israel under Obama, told Reuters he would be surprised if Trump and Netanyahu "determined so early in the time working together that they would rather scrap that agreement than try to enforce it in a tough manner and put other pressures unrelated to that deal on the Iranians".

Some foreign policy expertssay U.S. efforts to tighten the screws on Iran could seek to goad it into ditching the nuclear accord in hopes that Tehran - and not Washington - would then have to shoulder international blame for its collapse.

According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, an Israeli intelligence assessment recently presented to Netanyahu said revoking the pact would be an error, causing a chasm between Washington and other signatories like Russia and China.

Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence, said there were many areas outside the deal where pressure could be applied on Iran to change what he called its negative behavior of "subversiveness, supporting terrorism".

But beyond new sanctions and sharpened rhetoric, analysts say,it is unclear how far Trump could go. Arguments for restraint would include the risk of military escalation in the Gulf, out of which 40 percent of the world's seaborne crude oil is shipped, and strong European support for the nuclear deal.

Though the new U.S. strategy is in the early stages of development, the Trump administration, the sources say, is considering arange of measures, including seeking "zero tolerance" for any Iranian violations.

Trump's aides accused the Obama administration of turning a blind eye to some alleged Iranian infractions to avoid anything that would undermine confidence in the integrity of the deal. Obama administration officials denied being "soft" on Iran.

Other U.S. strategy options, the sources say, include sanctioning Iranian industries that aid missile development and designating as a terrorist group the Revolutionary Guards, accused by U.S. officials of fuelling Middle East proxy wars. That designation could also dissuade foreign investment in Iran because the Guards oversee a sprawling business empire there.

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Iran Missile Test Aligns Trump, Netanyahu Before the Israeli Leader's Visit - Newsweek

SitRep: White House Mulls Iran, Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Nods; Yemen Bans US Commando Raids; Iran Scrubs ... Foreign Policy (blog) The leaks continue. Another draft of a potential executive order has leaked from the Trump White House, calling for the State Department to consider designating Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization, several U.S ... and more »

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SitRep: White House Mulls Iran, Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Nods; Yemen Bans US Commando Raids; Iran Scrubs ... - Foreign Policy (blog)

White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated on Tuesday that President Donald Trump will take whatever actions he sees fit against Iran.

Speaking to reporters during his daily press briefing, Spicer was asked about comments by Irans Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier on Tuesday dismissed calls from the Trump administration to cease the countrys ballistic missile tests, and said that Trump had showed the "true face" of America.

Spicer replied by saying that Khamenei is going to realize that there is a new President in office. This President is not going to sit by and let Iran flout its violations, or its apparent violations to the joint agreement.

Trump will continue to take action as he sees fit, continued Spicer.

The President has also made clear time and time again that hes not going to project what those actions will be, and he will not take anything off the table. But I think Iran is kidding itself if they dont realize that there is a new President in town, he stressed.

The Trump administration last week imposed new sanctions on 25 individuals and companies connected to Iran's ballistic missile program and those providing support to the Revolutionary Guard Corps' Qods Force.

The sanctions came in response to a ballistic missile test conducted by Iran last week, in violation of UN Resolution 2231, which bars Iran from conducting ballistic missile tests for eight years and which went into effect after the nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers was signed.

Irans Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the sanctions, vowing that it too would ensure "legal restrictions" were imposed on the "American individuals and companies which have a role in aiding extremist and terrorist groups or contribute to the suppression and murder of the defenseless people in the region.

On Monday, Irans Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said that the ultimate losers are those who result to the language of force in dealing with Iran.

The Americans have chosen a wrong path these days and we hope that they will revise their approach and practice interaction, he said.

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'Iran is going to realize there's a new President in office' - Arutz Sheva

Just because youre using a Mac doesnt mean youre safe from hackers. Thats what two security researchers are warning, after finding a Mac-based malware that may be an attempt by Iranian hackers to target the U.S. defense industry.

The malware, called MacDownloader, was found on a website impersonating the U.S. aerospace company United Technologies, according to a report from Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson, who are researching Iranian cyberespionage threats.

The fake site was previously used in a spear-phishing email attack to spread Windows malware and is believed to be maintained by Iranian hackers, the researchers claimed.

Visitors to the site are greeted with a page about free programs and courses for employees of the U.S. defense companies Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing.

The malware itself can be downloaded from an Adobe Flash installer for a video embedded in the site. The website will provide either Windows or Mac-based malware, depending on the detected operating system.

A screenshot of the fake site.

The MacDownloader malware was designed to profile the victim's computer, and then steal credentials by generating fake system login boxes and harvesting them from Apple's password management system, Keychain.

However, the malware is of shoddy quality and is "potentially a first attempt from an amateur developer," the researchers said.

For instance, once the malware is installed, it will generate a fake Adobe Flash Player dialog box, only to then announce that adware was discovered on the computer and that it will attempt to clean it up.

"These dialogues are also rife with basic typos and grammatical errors, indicating that the developer paid little attention to quality control," the researchers said.

In addition, the malware failed to run a script to download additional malicious coding onto the infected Mac.

But despite the shoddy quality, the malware still managed to evade detection on VirusTotal, which aggregates antivirus scanning engines.

The researchers found other circumstantial evidence that the malware is linked to Iran. An exposed server that the MacDownloader agent uploaded showed wireless networks called "Jok3r" and "mb_1986." Both of these names have ties to previous Iranian hacking groups, including one known as Flying Kitten, which is suspected of targeting U.S. defense contractors and political dissidents.

In an email, Anderson said a colleague also observed MacDownloader targeting a human rights activist.

The danger is that many human rights supporters, especially in Iran, are dependent on Apple devices, the researchers said. "While this [malware] is neither sophisticated nor full-featured, its sudden appearance is concerning given the popularity of Apple computers," they wrote in their report.

Mac malware is fairly rare, according to security researchers. That's because hackers tend to attack Windows-based devices, because of their popularity.

However, Mac-based malware is still popping up here and there. Last month, researchers found another kind designed to spy on biomedical research centers. A separate Mac-based Trojan was found months earlier, targeting the aerospace industry.

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Mac malware, possibly made in Iran, targets US defense industry - Computerworld

President Trump could come under new pressure to lift the curtain on secret elements of the Iran nuclear deal struck by his predecessor, especially as the Islamic Republic continues its war of words with his administration.

Only days after the Iran nuclear deal was announced in July of 2015, news began to leak out about secret side agreements made between the Islamic Republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Some of those agreements have been subsequently released, but with the tension ratcheting up between Iran and Trump, who has criticized the deal, the White House could reveal more details.

Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them! Trump tweeted last week, quickly adding: Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.

Talk of secret "side agreements" involving Iran's past testing and inspection methods began almost as soon as the deal was reached. President Obamas national security adviser Susan Rice acknowledged that the documents between Iran and the IAEA were not public, but said Obama administration was informed of their contents and planned to share the details with Congress in a classified briefing.

Since then, however, a number of other alleged side deals have come to light and many Republicans in Congress including former Kansas congressman and President Trumps current CIA director Mike Pompeo - continued to demand that the full context of the deal with Iran is revealed, especially following the countrys recent failed ballistic missile test.

The fact that there are side deals to begin with is a problem, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News. The deal was sold to us as transparent and that hasnt been the case.

PJMedia columnist Roger Simon, in an article that was picked up by numerous conservative blogs, called for a full airing of the nuclear deal.

"The time is long since past for the complete details of this quondam deal to be released," read thecolumn.

The agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), forced Iran to halt its enrichment of uranium, a material that can be used in nuclear weapons and in exchange received widespread relief from U.S. and international sanctions that had crippled the Iranian economy.

One of the contentious issues brought up in the side deals is Irans claim that they can develop ballistic missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers and that the tests are legitimate because they are not designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

We will follow two restrictions: The first is mentioned in the JCPOA, in the matter of no nuclear planning, and the second is the range of 2,000 km, which has already been noted previously by all elements in Iran," Iranian Army chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi told local media back in 2015.

Officials from the U.S. and other Western nations contend that Tehran agreed two years ago to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work during the nuclear negotiations. That agreement was codified in a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in parallel, but independently from the nuclear accord.

Besides the ballistic missile tests, there have also been a number of side deals revealed since the nuclear deal was announced a year and a half ago.

The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that Washington paid a $1.7 billion ransom for U.S. hostages held in Iran and agreed to lift UN sanctions on two major Tehran banks. The Obama administration also agreed to lift sanctions on Air Iran that were first imposed when it was revealed that the airline was ferrying weapons and supplies for the countrys Revolutionary Guard.

Another side deal with the IAEA relaxed key restrictions on Irans nuclear program in a decade, rather than the original 15 years agreed upon, and also gave the country the right to collect its own soil samples, instead of IAEA inspectors, at the Parchin military base.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump pledged to be tough onIran and openly criticized the Iran deal as bad for the U.S. While his administration last week ordered sanctions against more than two dozen people and companies in retaliation for Iran's recent ballistic missile test, the new sanctions represent a continuation of the Obama administration's limited punishment for Iran's ballistic missile activity and avoid a direct showdown with Tehran over the nuclear deal itself.

The sanction targets were drawn up before Obama left office as Trump press secretary Sean Spicer noted - and don't affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or any major government entity, making it unclear how effective they'll prove as deterrents.

Still analysts and conservative lawmakers, like Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Corker of Tennessee, believe that Trumps sterner approach to U.S.-Iranian relations puts the country in a good position when it comes to renegotiating the terms of the deal with Iran.

Trump spoke on Sunday with King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the White House said the two leaders. "agreed on the importance of rigorously enforcing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and of addressing Irans destabilizing regional activities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would bring up the Iran issue with Trump when the two leaders meet next week.

The new administration is in a good position to call for Iran and the IAEA to release all the documents, Ben Taleblu said. If Trump wants to renegotiate the deal, he can really hold Irans feet to the fire by vigorously enforcing of the existing agreement.

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Details of Iran nuclear deal still secret as US-Tehran relations unravel - Fox News