Who's Killing Iran's Nuclear Scientists?

[revo]

If you drafted a team of Iranian Nuclear Scientists in your dead pool, you're probably kicking major ass.


"A nuclear scientist was killed in a blast in Tehran on Wednesday morning, an Iranian news agency reported. It's the latest in a string of attacks that Iran has blamed on Israel.

A motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb under Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's Peugeot 405, the state-run IRNA news agency said.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani condemned the attack and said it would not undermine Iran's resolve. "This is not the first time that arrogant powers adopt such futile measures," he said, according to Press TV.

Roshan, 32, was a deputy director for commercial affairs at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province and a graduate of Iran's Oil Industry University, according to the semi-official news agency Fars."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/iran-scientist-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

Roshan thus becomes at least the 4th Iranian nuclear scientist "assassinated" in the last two years, and the second to have had a motorcyclist place a bomb under his car.

[johnnya24]

All the evidence seems to point to CND. Their new slogan is a bit of a giveaway:

"Disarming the world, one nuclear scientist at a time"

[revo]

All the evidence seems to point to CND. Their new slogan is a bit of a giveaway:

"Disarming the world, one nuclear scientist at a time"

Is it a coincidence that they've all been Iranian?

[Piney Boy]

Israelis are doing it (with US help most likely). Just like in 2010 when Stuxnet created havoc on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

[johnnya24]

Is it a coincidence that they've all been Iranian?

It's hard to believe anything you hear in the press when it comes to incidents like this. Every side is going to be throwing out misinformation to deflect. The boldness and cowboy style execution would lead me towards Israel or Iran themselves. But it could just as easily be a UK or US operation, or a joint US/UK/Israeli operation, or some domestic faction within Iran opposed to the nuclear program or hell bent on destabilizing the situation.

But who knows ... with espionage stuff it's fair to assume that everything we are being told is BS.

Nothing surprises me these days. Today's report on the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana that triggered the Rwanda genocide shows just how entangled the west are in the affairs of foreign sovereign countries. The report suggests that the missiles which brought the plane down were fired from within the French airbase ... making the French culpable with, and possibly even involved in organising, the events that followed ... and they covered up their involvement with the previous report in 2006 blaming Paul Kagame and the Tutsi's for the assassination.

[Bob Kohm]

As long as they're dying who cares? I had an argument about this on Twitter this morning with a couple of think tankers-- focused attacks with bombs that do very little or no damage to anyone outside of the target or with gunshots beats the hell out of Israeli missiles and American airstrikes.

[Cobain's Ghost]

As long as they're dying who cares?

you wouldn't have legal/ moral concerns if we were assassinating scientists as a matter of foreign policy?

[Bob Kohm]

you wouldn't have legal/ moral concerns if we were assassinating scientists as a matter of foreign policy?

None at all; why would I? Knowing what we know now, would you have had a problem with taking out the chemists at IG Farben who were developing Zyklon-B for the gas chambers in the camps? We also took out Nazi scientists engaged in atomic work-- problem? You don't think we should've taken out A.Q. Khan when we had the chance in the '80s? Scientists engaged in WMD development for belligerent nations have always been fair game. Hell, one of the greatest failings of the Second World War was the failure by the Nazis to take out Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer and Teller despite the knowledge of what they were doing.

As I said, the bottom line is that this the nice way to handle the problem; the not so nice way involves lots and lots of dead civilians if we do it and god knows what if the the Israelis do. Assassination, like it or not, is the most humanitarian of choices when the action set is assassination, bombing of nuclear targets in civilian cities that will spew radiation into those cities, Israeli use of nuclear weapons now or in the future or Iranian possession and potential dissemination or use of nuclear weapons. Stack the dead scientists like cordwood and know that we or the Israelis or the French have done the work of the angels in doing so.

[heyelander]

we were engaged in a declared war against the nazis.

[DMT]

we were engaged in a declared war against the nazis.

'The War on Terror' includes everyone.

[bryanbutler]

None at all; why would I? Knowing what we know now, would you have had a problem with taking out the chemists at IG Farben who were developing Zyklon-B for the gas chambers in the camps? We also took out Nazi scientists engaged in atomic work-- problem? You don't think we should've taken out I.M. Khan when we had the chance in the '80s? Scientists engaged in WMD development for belligerent nations have always been fair game. Hell, one of the greatest failings of the Second World War was the failure by the Nazis to take out Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer and Teller despite the knowledge of what they were doing.

As I said, the bottom line is that this the nice way to handle the problem; the not so nice way involves lots and lots of dead civilians if we do it and god knows what if the the Israelis do. Assassination, like it or not, is the most humanitarian of choices when the action set is assassination, bombing of nuclear targets in civilian cities that will spew radiation into those cities, Israeli use of nuclear weapons now or in the future or Iranian possession and potential dissemination or use of nuclear weapons. Stack the dead scientists like cordwood and know that we or the Israelis or the French have done the work of the angels in doing so.

you clearly have not seen star wars. good thing obi-wan didn't kill anakin, because then darth could not have helped kill the evil emperor.

but jest aside, i find this pretty depressing. you have no idea under what circumstance this particular "nuclear scientist" is working - what duress (if any) - etc., or whether he is even really doing anything other than working at a nuclear power plant utilized entirely for energy purposes, and yet condone his killing? sure, he might be the evil mastermind of the iranian nuclear weapon effort, but you have no idea. and if you take the word of the government, i point you to iraq and WMDs in the early 00's.

i guess you'd condone killing every "nuclear scientist" at oak ridge, sandia, los alamos, INEL, brookhaven, etc., too?

[JudeBaldo]

If you drafted a team of Iranian Nuclear Scientists in your dead pool, you're probably kicking major ass.


"A nuclear scientist was killed in a blast in Tehran on Wednesday morning, an Iranian news agency reported. It's the latest in a string of attacks that Iran has blamed on Israel.
A motorcyclist placed a magnetic bomb under Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's Peugeot 405, the state-run IRNA news agency said.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani condemned the attack and said it would not undermine Iran's resolve. "This is not the first time that arrogant powers adopt such futile measures," he said, according to Press TV.

Roshan, 32, was a deputy director for commercial affairs at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province and a graduate of Iran's Oil Industry University, according to the semi-official news agency Fars."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/iran-scientist-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2

Roshan thus becomes at least the 4th Iranian nuclear scientist "assassinated" in the last two years, and the second to have had a motorcyclist place a bomb under his car.

He's actually the third.

[TranaGreg]

wow, have you guys just met Bob?

[Bob Kohm]

but jest aside, i find this pretty depressing. you have no idea under what circumstance this particular "nuclear scientist" is working - what duress (if any) - etc., or whether he is even really doing anything other than working at a nuclear power plant utilized entirely for energy purposes, and yet condone his killing? sure, he might be the evil mastermind of the iranian nuclear weapon effort, but you have no idea. and if you take the word of the government, i point you to iraq and WMDs in the early 00's.

I honestly don't give a damn if they were holding his kids at gunpoint, Bryan-- if he was furthering the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons (and he was a section head in the enrichment enterprise at Natanz, btw) he is a target and a legitimate one. Duress is not a consideration in this equation as this isn't about individuals but rather the dismantling of a program and the denial of knowledge and expertise in the building of nuclear weapons and the disincentivization of other Iranian scientists to engage in the program; further it greatly discourages Russian, Pakistani and North Korean weaponeers from free-lancing in Iran. As I said earlier, it can be done this way with little to no suffering of those outside the program or it can be achieved by cracking open reactor vessels with earth penetrating bombs... which might be a little hard on the truly innocent populations of Ishfahan and various other cities. Kill the damned scientists, engineers and IRGC generals running this and the missile program before a hell of a lot more people get killed. Ironically this can be easily compared to the decision to obliterate Hiroshima & Nagasaki in 1945-- make a statement to prevent making a massacre such as the one that would have occurred if the invasion had to take place. Here we take out those directly responsible in a way that causes far less damage than would the military campaign by the Israelis that would follow.

i guess you'd condone killing every "nuclear scientist" at oak ridge, sandia, los alamos, INEL, brookhaven, etc., too?

Of course not; they're ours. Would I condone it if I was an Iranian? No, not really as the horse is out of the barn in the case of the US nuclear program although I might like to take a shot at one or two of them to send a message if I thought I could get away with it without bringing down my own house. But I sure bet they would've liked to have taken out the brains behind Dimona back in the early '80s, eh?

[Bob Kohm]

we were engaged in a declared war against the nazis.

The point being? By this statement I must presume that you are appalled at us invading the sovereign airspace of Pakistan to assassinate bin Laden as we weren't at war with Pakistan and couldn't declare war on al Qaeda as it is a non-state actor, yes?