Who’s Killing Iran’s Nuclear Scientists?
An Iranian woman holds a placard with an anti-U.S. poster and pictures of killed Iranian nuclear scientists before a ceremony to form a human chain around the Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan, 280 miles south of Tehran, November 15, 2011.
Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters
The United States has denied all involvement in Wednesday’s assassination of 32-year-old Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. A killer on a motorcycle reportedly detonated a magnetized bomb attached to Roshan’s car, slaying the scientist and his bodyguard/driver. The motorcyclist escaped into Tehran’s morning traffic.
Roshan was identified as a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, a site Western intelligence believes is integral to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, which claims its research is purely peaceful, characterized the targeted killing of Roshan as “America and Israel’s heinous act.”
Murder of civilian academics is an awkward fit with the traditionally touted democratic virtues of Americanism.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor jumped to proclaim American innocence, saying the U.S. “had absolutely nothing to do” with the Iranian scientist’s death and that the U.S. condemns “all acts of violence, including acts of violence like what is being reported today.”
Not everyone is swallowing the White House’s denial whole. One sticking point is Wednesday’s resumption of CIA attack drone flights. The CIA’s targeted killings of suspected Islamist militants, for purposes of national security, belie Vietor’s condemnation of violent acts like the one that blew up Roshan. America’s War on Terror condones—pivots on—explosive attacks to blast offending individuals from the face of the earth.
Plus, assassinating nerds sets an unseemly precedent.
Some nation’s clandestine operatives, not necessarily America’s, appear to be offended by the notion of living, breathing Iranian scientists. Wednesday’s attack on Mostafa Roshan was one of five assassination attempts upon the Tehran brain trust in the past two years; four of the five attacks killed their targets.
- A bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up the car of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a physics professor at Tehran University, on January 12, 2010.
- Majid Shahriari, a nuclear engineer at Shahid Beheshti University and co-head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, perished in a November 2010 bomb attack.
- Another November 2010 bomb wounded scientist Fereidoun Abbasi. Upon his recovery, Abbasi was appointed head of Iran’s atomic agency.
- In July 2011, motorcycle-gunmen killed Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics specialist suspected of working on high-voltage switches essential to triggering an atomic warhead.
It’s plausible that America had no direct role in any of these targeted attacks. But it’s reasonable to assume that the hoods who wacked Iran’s scientists acted on behalf of American allies, allies receiving American military aid.
Some sources interpret Israeli Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz’s assertion that Iran should expect “things which take place in an unnatural manner” throughout 2012 as a cryptic claim of credit for the killings.
All good people who envision a world moving away from nuclear holocaust applaud putting potholes in Iran’s road to apocalypse-tipped cruise missiles. The future needs fewer nations rattling quivers full of nuclear warheads. If sanctions fail to deter Iran’s Armageddon ambitions, then step up the pressure. Agreed.
However, many good people also believe that certain lines of misconduct shouldn’t be crossed, not even in war. Murder of civilian academics, for instance, is an awkward fit with the traditionally touted democratic virtues of Americanism. Plus, assassinating nerds sets an unseemly precedent. Once daring assassins start picking off unarmed civil servants, where do we draw the line? At factory workers? Speechwriters? Economists?
Murder was frowned upon long before Moses stumbled down the slopes of Mount Sinai clutching his Ten Commandments, but even the lines of that deeply etched taboo blur in the sandstorms of global politics. Criminal courts assign absolute guilt. If a victim, even a criminal victim, is killed during a botched robbery, the driver of the getaway car is answerable for the death—along with the hothead who pulled the trigger.
When our nation’s close friends carry out lethal adventures that an international court could reasonably be expected to rule criminal, and when we allow our allies to effectively turn those black ops, by sheer quantity, into standard procedures, America is no longer working in the gray area. We’re deep into the dark side.
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