Assassination and Sabotage: Can it stop Iran?
Washington,
Nov 29 -
If you have been wading in WikiLeaks, you may have missed the news this morning that two Iranian nuclear physicists were targeted for assassination on Tehran's streets.
In a Jason Bourne-esque move, two motorcycle assailants attached bombs to the cars of two physics professors that were detonated remotely. One was killed and the other injured. Iranian reports describe one of the physicists as a loyal supporter of the regime involved in nuclear research. Western and Zionist forces were blamed. Other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed over the past couple years.
Today’s attack follows the reported "Stuxnet" computer worm, designed to infect Iranian’s nuclear program and spin its centrifuges out of control. Last week, the IAEA released a report documenting technical problems in Iran’s program.
All this has many asking whether these problems are the result of sabotage, sanctions or Iranian incompetence?
Iran wouldn’t be the first nuclear program to be hit by cloak and dagger tactics. This Atlantic article from five years ago mentions that European warehouses supplying Iraq’s Osirak reactor were bombed in the late ‘70s. Some Iraqi nuclear scientists were poisoned, others bludgeoned to death around that time. [Of course, the Israeli air force soon after destroyed the reactor].
Iran needs the outside black-market to supply its nuclear program, making it more vulnerable. The Atlantic piece foretold the Tehran hits, "When diplomatic efforts have begun to fail but an overt military strike is not yet politically or operationally feasible, covert action becomes attractive."
Nuclear expert David Kay says these "setbacks" have "done more to slow programs than any sanctions regime has or is likely to do." Bold claim. They do have the virtue of making Iranian leaders extremely paranoid, I imagine. Nasty stuff, but the stakes are sky high.
According to folks I talk to, these things can delay and disrupt, but can’t shut it off.
