"Don't have a smart TV?"; Controversy over the smart watch of the inactive defense chief
"Is your home TV not smart? We're the same!"
This was the response given by Sardar Gholamreza Jalali, head of the country's non-operational defense organization, to a question about the security risks of using a smart watch under the country's current conditions.
Following the assassination of several senior officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran, including Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the US ground attack and prisoners in Iran, this reaction and stance by an official whose duty is to maintain security sparked widespread criticism in Iran; in a country where the fires of war could reignite at any moment.
🔸 In response to the reporter's repeated question about "Isn't this smart watch dangerous for the authorities?" he tried to downplay the issue and said: "Is this war or peace right now? Is the plane flying or not? Is the flight in Tehran traveling to Mashhad or not?" The government of the Islamic Republic, especially in recent years, has been the target of several infiltrations and breaches in its security layers; from the theft of nuclear documents in 1397 to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, in 1403, who had traveled to Iran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Masoud Pezeshkian as president.
However, none of these blows were more severe than the first day of the Israeli and American military ground attack on Iranian soil on March 9 last year, in which Ali Khamenei, the former leader of the Islamic Republic, and several senior security and military officials were killed.
The Financial Times later revealed in a report that prisoners managed to track the location of Khamenei and the commanders meeting with him by hacking traffic cameras around Khamenei's house and penetrating the mobile phone network in Tehran. It is true that US airstrikes on Iranian soil have currently stopped, but the war has not officially ended yet and has entered its eighth month while diplomats are still trying to find a way out of it.
🔸 In this atmosphere and situation, the sight of a smart watch on the wrist of the head of the country's dysfunctional defense organization became sensitive and caused critics of Gholamreza Jalali to emphasize that a person in this position should be more careful about security risks.
The Tabnak news site wrote in an article on the same topic: "Mr. Jalali! You are not an ordinary citizen who can say that people also have smart TVs and end the matter. Your responsibility requires you to be more vigilant than others regarding infiltrations, espionage, information leaks, and any possible means of collecting sensitive data." The news and analytical site "Rooz No" also wrote about this, referring to the irony in this story: "It is interesting that the most serious critic of officials' use of smart tools is not necessarily among cybersecurity experts; Gholamreza Jalali himself gave such a warning many years ago."
Read the full report on the Radio Farda website.