An Iranian nuclear scientist who supervised a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility has been killed by a bomb placed on his car by two assailants in northern Tehran.
The attack strongly resembles earlier killings of scientists working on the country’s nuclear program, which have been linked to U.S. and Israeli covert actions.
The car bomb killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz facility. “The deputy governor of Tehran is blaming [the attack] on Israel, saying it wants to destabilize the country ahead of presidential elections in March,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said.
Previously, a similar attack on January 2010, killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a senior physics professor at Tehran University, when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work.
In November 2010, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in different parts of the capital killed a nuclear scientist, Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and involved with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
Another incident in July 2011 involved two unidentified gunmen on motorcycles who assassinated Darioush Rezaeinejad. Some reports said Rezaeinejad was an electronics student, while others said he was a scientist working on the nuclear program.
In November, the Guardian reported unequivocally that U.S.-Israeli “black operations” have “targeted Iran’s scientists.” And in August, the German paper Der Spiegel leaked an admission from an Israeli intelligence official that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, had been involved in the assassinations.
Speaking to the latest of such killings at the time, Der Spiegel wrote “There is little doubt in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies that Israel is behind the assassination of Darioush Rezaei.” The Israeli intelligence official told the reporter, “That was the first serious action taken by the new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo.”
In a closed-door parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, Israel’s military chief of staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said Iran should expect “continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.” This was widely interpreted as referring to covert acts of sabotage and violence in Iran.
There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature. Given this, if these attacks have been carried out by the U.S. and Israel, they are simply unprovoked acts of terrorism.
Israel’s military chief of staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said Iran should expect “continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.” This was widely interpreted as referring to covert acts of sabotage and violence in Iran.
Aren't covert acts of sabotage and violence also called terrorism?
Yes, this man died in an act of terrorism, during a period in which the US has declared that we are at war with "the terrorists." Bush said, "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists." I suppose the purpose of the Obama presidency is to recast the message so that it cannot be so easily shown up as corrupt and hypocritical.
The child-like faith in the goodness of one's own country, the thing which passes for patriotism, shows in many comments in response to this act seen at the CNN report of it by ordinary Americans who still believe in the mission of the US. While a certain number of kids on the playground announce there is no Santa Claus, many of the others are trying to prove that there still is, figuratively speaking.
Those who imagine there is some other explanation than US or Israeli terror in the killing of this scientist will say that perhaps his wife, suffering under years of oppression (you know, because of Islam) finally had her revenge. Or that the Iranian government needing propaganda against the West, set it up to look like the work of outsiders (false flag). These statements preserve the sense of innocence of the nations committing this kind of terror in Iran.
There's another force at work: American exceptionalism. Those who would proclaim our innocence in this nevertheless believe that we and Israel are entitled to have all the nukes we want, and to protect our own scientists. If suddenly there were an outbreak of this kind of car-bombing in the US, it would be treated like another 9/11 and start a war with Iran to protect national security. People would jump on board and the cynics who criticize our own programs like this in Iran (and those of Israel) would be thrown into the water.
So what am I criticizing here? Is it merely the propaganda of a past administration? Well, partly. Because it has left so many in righteous indignation that they cannot see facts staring them in the face right now. But I condemn the actions of the present administration, which not only is mixed up in this, but which has now signed a written justification for it, the NDAA.
I believe at one point, "terrorism" was defined as acts of violence against innocent people to achieve a political goal. Blowing up a civilian research scientist with a car bomb because you want to force the government of Iran to give up their civilian nuclear research program seems to certainly meet that definition.
We are the terrorists.
Hale,
He is not an innocent, he is a government employee of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is working on a nuclear program that is not transparent and uncooperative with the international community. Iran doesn't YET have weapon capability, they are simply getting to that point. He is complicit in organized crime, he is not innocent.
working on a nuclear program that is not transparent and uncooperative with the international community.
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That's actually a lie and a fabrication. And there is no such thing as "international community" with which Iran is obligated to work. Iran's only obligation is to the UN as the country is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
Israel isn't a signatory and has never allowed inspectors into its nuclear facilities. There is more than one, of course.
And when it did, it walled off parts of the facility so as to prevent American inspectors (in the 1960s) from seeing them.
TERRORISM — Root cause is vengeance — Only solution is end vengeance
So, as 99% of ongoing terrorism is the result of vengeance generated by the brutal imperialism and plunder of Empire USA, only such Empire builders can bring an end to it. A fact well known by all the corporate rich who own all of Western mainstream media, and a fact locked in darkness and hidden from all the mainstream public.
newt gingrich proposed these very acts during one of the debates just as long as we had "deniabilty". Happy newt?
I'm really getting tired ogf my posts getting deleted especially since they aren't malicous.
Rick, Anti-War is not an un-biased news source, one has to be careful when not towing the "party" line, this isn't a free-speech zone
True that, antiwar.com isn't so "antiwar," when it comes to belligerence towards Isarel.
How do you know it wasn't done by the Iranian gov't to provoke a war with Israel? Hmmm??
If indeed you are what you say you are, then you do not surprise me. Where I live, the Iranian community is, if you ask them, expat due to the fall of the Shah and the rise of the mullahs. I think their relations which the Jews who live around them are very cordial. That is, they live together peaceably and even have some joint businesses in the town.
I would prefer that they remain as loyal immigrant Americans along with their Jewish neighbors. But the story is not so simple, because I am sure they were far more important in Iran during the reign of the Shah. Naturally, they would prefer to return in triumph to their country.
I would be surprised if an attack on Iran from the US and Israel would make it any easier for them to return. My father grew up with some Russians who were close to the Tsar – so close their father was killed with the Tsar's family. Dreams of an imperial Russia they took to the grave. But even after the fall of communism, the Tsar's world never resurrected. Nor will the Shah's. You can put that in the bank.
er, how are they "cowards"? Whose side are you on???
It is highly unlikely that the US was behind this, for several reasons:
(1) The methods by which the murders were carried out are typical for Mossad — the bombs, the motorcycles, the gunmen, etc.. In other words, by any means necessary. That's Mossad.
(2) Unlike the United States that sometimes smuggled or kidnapped Iraqi scientists — and after WWII, Nazi scientists — for its own military projects, or for insider information, Israel isn't interested in any of that. Whereas the U.S. could benefit from an ex-Iranian scientist working at Los Alamos, for example, Israel would never allow nor trust a non-J.e.w. to work at Dimona. So as far as Israel is concerned, Iranian scientists are more beneficial dead than alive.
(3) Israeli officials have acknowledged in the past that they plan to target Iranian facilities and scientists. To the best of my knowledge, US officials have never made such statements.
(4) The United States has no strategic interest in provoking Iran. When US officials are denouncing Iran, they are doing so for Israel's benefit and due to Israeli pressure.
(5) The only other potential enemy Iran has in the region is Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and neither country has the experience or logistics to carry out such successful assassinations.