Killing of Iranian Nuclear Scientist Heralds War

13 January 2010
Mas'ud Ali-Mohammadi, a leading nuclear scientist and professor of atomic physics at University of Tehran, was assassinated in front of his house in the heart of Tehran yesterday morning. This is a major security breach that shakes Iran's image.

It also has deep significance in terms of the extent of Iran's preparedness to confront any US or Israeli aggression because of its adherence to its nuclear programme and insistence on rejecting the Western demands to stop enriching uranium. A scientist of the stature of Ali-Mohammadi was bound to be a target for killing or abduction by intelligence services hostile to Iran, particularly at this time. The question that begs an answer is Iran's failure to take the necessary security precautions to provide utmost protection for this scientist.

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that the initial investigation has revealed signs of an "evil move by a triangle of the United States, Israel, and their mercenaries in this terrorist attack." Such an accusation cannot be ruled out because plotting against Iran is in full swing by both these countries to wreck Iran's domestic stability in the hope of triggering a revolution to overthrow the ruling regime or, at least, to undermine it.

Israeli intelligence agencies were proficient at hunting down Arab nuclear scientists. In the early 1980s, the Israeli Mosad succeeded in assassinating the Iraqi nuclear scientist, Yahya al-Mashadd, in his hotel room in Paris, where he was residing, as part of the Israeli efforts to prevent development of the Iraqi nuclear programme in the era of the late Iraqi President Saddam Husayn. These Israeli efforts ended up with a raid on Iraq and the destruction in 1981 of the Osirak, or the Tammuz nuclear reactor. It is regrettable that the F16 aircraft that carried out the raid flew in Arab (Saudi and Jordanian) airspace on their way to Iraq and back to Israel.

The assassination of Ali-Mohammadi by a rigged motorbike came less than a year after the abduction of another Iranian nuclear scientist during the minor pilgrimage in Mecca. Iran at the time accused the Saudi Government of handing him over to the US intelligence, something which the Saudi Government strongly denied. The fate of this scientist remains unknown to this day.

These acts of assassination and abduction reveal that there is a plan in which US and Israeli, and perhaps Arab parties, have been involved to hunt down Iranian nuclear scientists one after another. This is perhaps a prelude to an attack to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities as had happened to Iraq, because what worries the United States and Israel is not only the nuclear facilities but the brains operating them. Brains can continue nuclear programmes if the nuclear facilities are destroyed, and restore them to normal at record speed.

It is no coincidence that the US intelligence services and those colluding with them had assassinated the vast majority of Iraqi scientists in the early months after the occupation of Iraq so that they would not be able under any circumstances to rebuild the Iraqi arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, which were destroyed during the inspection for weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion, and resume the Iraqi nuclear programme.

The question that must be asked now is about the Iranian official reaction to this serious violation of the regime's security. Will the Iranian Government content itself solely with tightening the security measure, or will it resort to vengeful actions against Israeli and US targets?

What is certain is that the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Ali-Mohammadi, points to two key things: First, a bloody intelligence warfare is currently being launched against Iran by collaborators linked to US and Israeli agencies and, second, the countdown to a war on Iran to destroy its nuclear ambitions has started.