France will strengthen sanctions against Iran and propose broader European Union penalties targeting Iranian individuals and entities tied to last month’s sabotage of supermarket refrigeration systems and other malicious cyber activity, European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad said Thursday. The move follows Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s dismissal of the French attribution, saying that “unable to manage fridges let alone addressing grievances of its people, French government is shifting blame for its failures onto others.”
Paris on Monday formally attributed the Oct 11 and Oct 12 attacks at more than 700 retail sites to Shahid Kaveh, an offensive cyber unit under Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, after hackers overrode Danfoss and Dixell temperature controllers, spoiled tens of millions of euros in food and sparked about 20 fires. While French prosecutors sought international arrest warrants for three commanders of the unit, US intelligence agencies reached only a “low confidence” assessment that Iran was behind the French incidents and did not link them to a specific group such as the Revolutionary Guards, according to US officials.
