…for the unfortunate Iranian nuclear scientist who was killed by a bomb this weekend.
OK, that’s long enough. Between this sort of thing and Stuxnet, I’m glad to see that someone is doing something about this. I wish that I had confidence that it was us.
[Update a while later]
On the life expectancy of Iranian nuclear scientists:
The attacks could be a concerted effort to retard Iran’s nuclear progress, or they could be meant to hype Iran’s own “terror threat” and provide an excuse to crack down on domestic opposition. The only certainty is that the life expectancy of Iranian nuclear physicists is falling rapidly, and is now almost as low as that of Iran’s civil-rights activists, journalists, and public intellectuals.
Given the stated goals of the Iranian nuclear program, I’m hoping that it will go lower.
I wish that I had confidence that it was us.
If not the US, who would be behind it? Israel? China? Saudi Arabia?
It was successful, and we have no idea who did it…hence, Mossad
So you wish you had confidence that the US was engaging in state-sponsored terrorism?
If a foreign country did a car bomb that murdered a Los Alamos employee and almost took his wife with him, most people here would rightly call that an act of terrorism, but I guess those evil Iranians had it coming to them…
~Jon
So you wish you had confidence that the US was engaging in state-sponsored terrorism?
No.
If a foreign country did a car bomb that murdered a Los Alamos employee and almost took his wife with him, most people here would rightly call that an act of terrorism
Some people might call it that, but not rightly.
I guess those evil Iranians had it coming to them
It’s a risk one takes when engaged in warfare.
Complicity in producing nuclear weapons for people who regularly claim a near neighbor deserves wholesale extermination and who already support retail deadly attacks on that neighbor’s civilians is perhaps not morally comparable to working at Los Alamos these days.
Whatever. One possibility to keep in mind here is that it could be an internal Iranian operation. Some of the agendas such might address: Punishing scientists seen as involved in introducing Stuxnet to the nuke program’s computers, punishing scientists seen as politically dissident or supporting a rival faction, intimidating the rest of the nuke program to accept massively tighter security, making a rival faction look bad for allowing the bombings to happen, ratcheting up public paranoia so they’ll accept more hardship, or some combination of any or all of the above.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a western op; I don’t have enough data to guess either way. But keep in mind what a highly stressed faction-ridden place Iran is right now, and keep in mind that some of the factions are into black ops up to their eyebrows, and that almost all of the factions are, well, Persians, IE notoriously subtle and devious for several millenia now. Think carefully before taking anything out of Iran at strictly face value.
Goff,
We AREN’T Iran, and the notion that there is any sort of basis for comparing us to them is as insulting as it is stupid. If you cannot differentiate between a theocratic police state that has open stated its desire to destroy one of its neighbors (along with a long list of other crimes and open provcations) and a reasonably open (if flawed) democracy which has used its overwhelming power in a reasonably (again, if imperfectly) benign manner, then you are fundamentally unserious, and likely too silly to be using a computer.
Not all nation-states are created equal, and the notion of treating them as such causes us more heartache than is entirely worthwhile. Moral equivilency is an empty doctrine that might appeal to 12 year olds, but should be left out of adult conversations.
Remember Gerald Bull?
I guess those evil Iranians had it coming to them
Yep.
Ed — I remember Gerald Bull and his work very well. What is really weird is that he was a friend of a friend of mine. I remember the day he was gunned down vividly. I was visiting my my first-tier friend, seeing him for the first time in several years. He was visibly agitated. Only later did I find out that his friend, Gerald Bull, had just been gunned down. The best bet is still Mossad.
Rand, I have to agree with Jon on this one, it’s unnecessary and beneath you. I visit here primarily for your views and reporting of the worlds space flight.
I recognize that you are Jewish, and a semi-hawk when it comes to countries that threaten Israel, America, and world peace in general, but stooping to cheering the assassination of a scientist?
You didn’t need to go there to have a well read blog.
Your reply to Jon “Some people might call it that, but not rightly.” in response to his suggestion that a similar attack in the USA would be considered terrorism, well, what would YOU call it?
What would the car-bombing by Iran of a Los Alamos employee (and his wife) be called?
Justifiable sanctioning by a foreign power “cuze dey be da best?”
Please.
I recognize that you are Jewish
Then you “recognize” something that is untrue. I am not now, and I have never been, Jewish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
I find this…well, I don’t know exactly what I find this, but it isn’t good. Some might think it anti-semitic, even when I’m not Jewish, because you thought I was.
…in response to his suggestion that a similar attack in the USA would be considered terrorism, well, what would YOU call it?
I would call it an act of war, and I would expect whoever did it to make of it what they would. Because, you know, we are at war, even if people don’t want to recognize it.
Oh, sorry Rand. I thought I had read this in other posts. My apologies for the mistake. I do not have a problem with people who ARE Jewish, but do think it colors their worldview, as would be expected given history.
Even if we ARE at war with Iraq, there is always a line that folks like you must decide if you want to cross. I don’t think you need to cross that line to be a great reporter of news.
Bennett,
Rand (who doesn’t need me to speak for him, but I will do so anyway) is neither Jewish nor a reporter of news. He is certainly a reporter of opinions, and he expressed one in this thread.
This isn’t about Israel, it is about Iran, a country that has made it abundantly clear that it considers itself to be at war with the West in general, and us specifcally. As for what happened to the two scientists in question, far better that two scientists (who remember, are participating in the development and deployment of a weapon of mass destruction, one that would almost certainly be used to kill thousands/millions of people) be killed than the fruits of their labors be used to destroy orders of magnitude more lives.
Finally, this whole issue of equivilence, as if Iran is our equal or deserves even the slightest regard as a member of civilized society strikes me as simply surreal. Here we have a state that routinely engages in any number of abhorrent practices (torture – the real thing, not shadows like waterboarding – execution by stoning, judicial mutiliation, a legal code that would make Torquemada blush, not to mention truly medieval behavior towards women, gays, etc.) and we here endless bleats that we should consider them as peers?
Iran by its own actions has placed itself outside the bounds of civlized society, and should be treated as such, certainly not regarded as a welcome member of our councils and protected by our laws. Until the 20th century (and even into the early part of that) pirates and others who placed themselves beyond civilized law could expect to be treated with short, sharp justice, and a quick execution. That we have failed to do so with rogue states like Iran (loathed even – or especially – by its neighbors) and North Korea is our shame, and shows not forbearance, but cowardice and yes…decadence.
And before you ask, my backgrounds is 3/8 East European Jew, 3/8 Arab (Saudi), and 1/4 Irish Catholic…I am none of those…I am an American, and hold my undivided loyalty there and there alone.
Scott Says:
Thanks for the eloquent comment. I agree that Iran is all that you note, and having watched a bit of Charlie Rose’s confrontation with the Human Rights Minister of Iran (or some such) on the boob tube this afternoon (while dealing with my 4 year old) I agree and recognize that Iran is a country that needs… something better than it has as leadership.
I respect Rand, and his opinions, or I wouldn’t be here reading his posts. But I think that there ARE lines that we choose to cross, or not, and regardless if we take note in enthusiasm, the mossad and the like will do the bidding of those who rule.
We can note, or cheer, or not. There are many things to inspire the human mind, we must decide which to write about.
Respectfully,
Bennett
but stooping to cheering the assassination of a scientist?
I have to disagree. A lot of people die in wars whether those wars are official or not. Being a scientist in itself isn’t and shouldn’t be a shield against harm when they have chosen sides. This guy was apparently a key person in getting their nuclear weapons program running again after Stuxnet.
Given that Iran is not a democracy, and a nuclear powered Iran makes a Middle East arms race a definite possibility, and a nuclear war in the Middle East more likely (even if they aren’t directly involved), why isn’t this guy a legitimate military target in a nasty, covert war?
So far the world has been lucky that nuclear weapons remain hard to build and maintain. Of the new nuclear powers since China in the 60s, no one has been inclined to build more than a few dozen of them. Maybe Iran and any future nuclear powers that it inspires will also go for relatively small numbers of nuclear bombs. But every time another country gets nukes, not only do we increase the risk of an accidental nuclear war, we also increase the risk of a Cold War style arms race where two or more countries build excessive numbers of nuclear weapons.
And while there may be more destructive weapons out there, nuclear bombs have far less risk to the wielder than say some nasty disease. When combined with a fast deliver system, such as a missile or plane, you have the most dangerous weapon mankind has ever developed to this point.
The history of proliferation is fortunately slow, but it still is chilling. Every nuclear weapon in the world can trace its heritage one way or another back to the Manhattan Project. It truly is a genii that can’t be stuffed back into the bottle. But we can make the world safer by resisting the spread of nuclear weapons technology while reducing existing stockpiles.
If we look at the Middle East in particular, there are several things that make it particularly dangerous. First, the potential combatants are very close to one another. For the Cold War, most weapons were more than half an hour away. That gave each side some time to deliberate. There were several false alarms where someone had to decide if an oncoming blip was real or not.
I gather Israel and Iran are minutes apart by missile. Iran and Saudi Arabia or Saudi Arabia and Israel (or Egypt and …, you get the idea) are much closer. If any of those countries start playing MAD, then they’ll have very little time in which to decide to counterattack or not.
There’s also the idea of a preemptive strike. If you think someone is about to attack you with nukes, you might decide to act first in order to take out their nukes before they can be used on you. It would be fairly easy for nuclear wars to start due to the short time frames for decisions and the usual human error in these systems.
Killing this guy puts off that future by a little bit.
This article in this mornings wsj indicates it is not clear at all that there was western involvement:
And:
An all-around nutty country.
While this thread is very stale, I must admit to having second thoughts about my earlier post. The key problem is that I don’t who or why he was killed. It could have been a targeted killing of a key person to slow down the Iranian nuclear bomb program. But if that were true, why wasn’t he better protected? Something doesn’t seem right about that scenario.
That leaves two similar possibilities, that it was either someone killing a convenient but “low value” target (say a foreign intelligence agency killing a academician mostly unrelated to the program because it was easy and would terrorize those actually involved in the program) or some Iranian secret police keeping the staff in line.
I still stand by my position that the Iranian nuclear bomb program and its staff are valid military targets. But I don’t know that these killings were of that sort.