There is another possible explanation, though it sounds even more like an airport novel than the Stuxnet story does. Consider that a lot of people, including t

There is another possible explanation, though it sounds even more like an airport novel than the Stuxnet story does. Consider that a lot of people, including the US, Israel, and just about everyone else on the planet would like to do anything possible to derail the Iranian nuclear activities. Making the centerfuges self-destruct by introducing Stuxnet would do that - but making the Iranians think that a virus was the problem would have the same effect. I'm sure that the Iranians spent a lot of effort trying to remove the malware from the computers controlling the centerfuges and they probably even took them off-line until they were sure that the controllers were clean. Why would you risk the very valuable remaining centerfuges until you were sure the problem was fixed? They might have even tried to replace the Windows controllers with something running Linux or Solaris or something. It's quite likely that the clean-up from Stuxnet delayed the enrichment process even more than the original damage. Malware is a convenient excuse for computer problems. "I don't have my homework because the computer crashed" certainly sounds valid but it's also an excuse that people immediately understand and have a hard time disputing. The Iranians may have internally blamed Stuxnet for the problems but isn't it possible that someone at Natanz might be using that to off-load blame for some other problem? It's also a convenient story for Israeli and Western Intelligence. Perhaps the Israelis really did do something to destroy the centerfuges - perhaps they had a mole on the inside who unbalanced the centerfuges with sweaty fingerprints or grains of sand. It's reasonably likely, especially this close to the time of the event, that the story they would want the Iranians to believe isn't the actual story. Put out a false account and watch the Iranians running around reformatting their computers while your man on the inside stays safe and ready to act again. If the Stuxnet story is true it shows remarkable technical cleverness by whoever did it. But if they're that clever they might be even slightly more cunning - enough to throw off the Iranians as to the actual cause and retain the ability to bung up the works again.