The Latest Episode in the Covert War in Iran

Make no mistake about it, there’s a covert war being waged inside Iran right now. This latest killing comes on the heels of a number of previous assassinations of nuclear scientists inside Iran. Al Jazeera English lists the most recent killings:

“A similar bomb explosion on January 12, 2010, killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a senior physics professor at Tehran University, when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work… In November 2010, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in different parts of the capital killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another. In July 2011, motorcycle-riding gunmen killed Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics student. Other reports identified him as a scientist involved in suspected Iranian attempts to make nuclear weapons. Rezaeinejad allegedly participated in developing high-voltage switches, a key component in setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead.”

This list does not include the sophisticated cyber attacks on Iran’s computer network that operates its nuclear facilities and the random explosions that have been occurring in Iran’s arms depots and elsewhere.

With daily threats coming out of DC and Tel Aviv that “all options are on the table” in relation to Iran’s nuclear program and that in the final option, a military solution is a plausible one, one finds it difficult to believe Obama or Netanyahu that their administrations have nothing to do with such attacks; this all in the context of a concerted US-led effort to strangle Iran’s economy through sanctions that may soon target Iran’s oil industry – the first time ever such an approach will be adopted.

Here’s the al Jazeera video report on the latest killing.

It should also not be ruled out that the People’s Mujahideen possibly played a roll in the attack. The Mujahideen has a well entrenched network of agents in Iran and has proved itself time and again an indispensable asset to the US and Israeli foreign policy establishments’ anti-Iran policy.  Although the Mujahideen is listed as a terror organization by the US State Department, it would not come as a surprise that the US is working hand-in-hand with the Mujahideen to destabilize Iran. In America’s so-called “War on Terror,” groups that partake in terrorism but are not opposed to the US can serve as potential allies.  In other words, the “War on Terror” is really a selective military undertaking targeting, not all global terrorism (i.e. the Mujahideen are exempt), but America’s enemies, with or without their adoption of terrorism as a tactic (think Iraq).

I feel sorry for the people inside Iran who have to live in a country where its economic health is constantly being crippled (sanctions always hurt the regular people more than the government elite), their leadership screens candidates and then still feels obligated to tamper with election results, they’re continuously asking themselves if yet another disastrous war will be visited upon them (Iran in my opinion is still deeply scarred by the devastating eight-year war with Saddam),  and if in the meanwhile they’ll be in the vicinity of the next assassination that might claim their lives as well.

Woe unto those who drag the US or Iran into yet another war.