The New York Times reported Monday that Iran believes Israel killed two Iranian scientists with poison amid a spate of suspected Israeli assassinations inside the Islamic Republic.
An Iranian official and people with ties to the government told the Times that Ayoub Entezari, an Iranian aeronautical engineer who worked for a military research center, and Kamran Aghamolaei, a geologist, were both poisoned separately at the end of May and died within a few days of falling ill.
Adding to the suspicion that Israel was responsible, Israeli media reported that Aghamolaei worked at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, a site of frequent Israeli covert attacks. But people close to Aghamolaei deny the claim and say that he worked for a private geological research company.
Last month, the Times reported that Israel is suspected of being behind a May 25 drone attack on an Iranian military facility outside of Tehran that killed a young Iranian engineer. Israel is the likely culprit since it has launched similar attacks on Iranian facilities in the past.
A few days before the drone attack, on May 22, a colonel in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was gunned down in Tehran. Iran formally blamed Israel for the assassination, and the Times reported that Israel told the US it was responsible.
The mysterious deaths inside Iran continue as Iranian media reported that two men working for the IRGC in the aerospace industry died while on unspecified missions over the weekend. Both deaths were labeled as “martyrdoms,” suggesting Iran believes they were killed.
While it’s not known if the Israelis are responsible for all of the deaths, it’s clear that Israel is ramping up its covert war against Iran. At the same time, Israel has been claiming Iran is plotting attacks against Israeli citizens in foreign countries.
In the latest warning, Israel told its citizens to leave Turkey due to alleged threats from Iranian operatives. But the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Monday that any “response” Iran would make against Israel would not be in a third country.
“If we will want to respond to Israel’s activities, our answer will be given in its place and not in a third country,” said Foreign Ministry Saeed Khatibzadeh.
They might be religious wackos, but they do seem to more or less tell the truth about this kind of thing. It is an embarrassing admission
Hi John
The Iranians are no more religious wackos than the Amerikkkan “Christian” right ( see SCOTUS).
Nothing embarrassing about calling a spade a spade, John. Of course IsraHell is responsible; Iranians don’t murder their own citizens.
…unless they’re gay/Baha’i/Kurds/apostates/antigovernment…
Sure they do, try to be gay in Iran, still the Iranians rightly view the Saudis as religious nuts
Try to be a gay Baptist. My husband’s cousin was raised Baptist, is gay, and moved to London to avoid the backlash in the family.
Israel has a long and well established history with these types of activity. It would be very surprising to me, if indeed, Israel had nothing to do with this. This is status quo for Israel (and other governments as well).
“While it’s not known if the Israelis are responsible for all of the deaths, it’s clear that Israel is ramping up its covert war against Iran. At the same time, Israel has been claiming Iran is plotting attacks against Israeli citizens in foreign countries.”
Sure, let’s call it covert. But once again one side does actual terrorism and justifies that terrorism by claiming the other side is planning terrorism. Meanwhile, accusations of state sponsored terrorism are aimed at the state supposedly plotting terrorism but never against the state doing the actual terrorism.
You can’t understand Israel and Zionism unless you know what’s written in the Talmud. If you do read it, you’ll be shocked.
You shouldn’t wage a war of attrition against a country with ten times your population. Do the math. This is why Israel needs to keep Middle Easterners killing each other.
Middle easterners don’t need israeli encouragement to kill each other. They’ve been doing it just fine on their own
Hey Odele. Where’d you go on that other Zio thread? Middle Easterners kill each other as well as anybody, but they do it more with help. It doesn’t take much. All together now- “Divide and Conquer”. But the world, even the Middle East, is becoming steadily more integrated. And informed. Israeli apartheid will no more survive this century than South African apartheid survived the last.
The suffering of blacks in South Africa under its apartheid regime has become an antisemitic tool by which to delegitimize Israel, Christian pro-Israel activist and Johannesburg native Olga Meshoe Washington said on Monday.
The situation in Israel was incomparable to that of South Africa, so much so that a new definition of apartheid had been created to allow for what was a decades-old “lie” first conceived by Soviet and Arab propaganda
“It trivializes the humiliation and injustices endured by black South Africans who lived through apartheid and how still, together with their descendants, bear the scars of its legacy.”
“It erases the very real, very lived experience of the brutality of apartheid, a reality that includes mothers who to this day do not know what happened to their children, and millions of black South Africans who had to flee their country and live in exile under fear of persecution purely because of the color of their skin,” Washington said.
As I said before: anyone who calls israel an “apartheid state” has either never been to Israel or has never been to apartheid South Africa.
As I said in the comment you never responded to: I’ve been in Israel and seen Israeli apartheid with my own eyes. You should try it sometime. The only substantive difference between South African apartheid and Israeli apartheid is that one is gone and the other will be.
Actually I did reply. I thought you finally saw the light. In fact I have been to Israel. I was born there and lived there. I dare say I’m a bit more familiar with israel than you.
Missed it, didn’t get a notice, and my response a minute ago must have contained one or more trigger words because I got “Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by News from Antiwar.com.” Maybe you’ll be saved by the censor. So why did you leave? I gather you’re not Palestinian …
I was a child when my parents left
Was your house bulldozed?
The main differences between South African apartheid and Israeli apartheid are that the South African regime didn’t pretend it wasn’t doing what it was doing and shriek “anti-semite!” at anyone who noticed what it was doing.
You can do better than that Thomas. Israel proper is different from the occupied territories. Had the Palestinians been earnest in seeking peace, they would be in a far better situation today.
Yes, Israel proper is different from the occupied territories — just like the South African regime set up fake “homelands” for its black population. The “homelands,” like the occupied territories, were theoretically separate from, but actually ruled by, the apartheid regime’s “actual” country.
Like others, you always trail off at the end of your denials of apartheid with an excuse FOR apartheid. If it’s not what it is, why do you need an excuse for it being what it is?
You do not start a book in the middle. If you accept the fact that israel had a right to exist within the 1967 borders in peace, then this book starts in 1967 when Israel won a defensive war and took the occupied territories. Since then, she has relinquished the majority of the territories ( the Sinai and Gaza). There have been a number of offers of peace including those by Ohlmert and Barak which essentially offered to return everything Including Arab sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The response by the Palestinians was a murderous intifada. Israel has learned from the debacle of Gaza. They cannot unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and let Hamas take over. Most Israelis do not want to stay there but until there is a viable peace offer from the other side, there is no choice. This is the real history of this conflict. Throwing around
words like “apartheid” are cheap propaganda efforts that may work on those who don’t know better. But then again, I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
Your post is 90% “here are reasons why apartheid is the right policy” and 10% “you shouldn’t call it apartheid.”
The question of whether apartheid is justified is different from the question of whether apartheid is apartheid.
The situation in the West Bank is not good and I would say untenable in the long run. As I said, most Israelis would like to get out of there and live their lives in peace. But they know that withdrawing unilaterally without a peace treaty puts them at greater risk. Despite this, what you see in the West Bank is NOT apartheid:
Pastor Kenneth Meshoe, a South African member of Parliament, a great friend of Israel, puts it this way: “Those who know what real apartheid is, as I know, know that there is nothing in Israel that looks like apartheid … it is inaccurate and it is malicious.”
Your entire case for it not being apartheid is that admitting it’s apartheid makes Israel look bad.
You’re right. It does make Israel look bad.
“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.” -Ariel Sharon
What a crock!
By hook or crook, they wont be able to stand against progress.