Like three previous Iranian scientists ambushed on their morning commute, the latest nuclear expert to die on his way to work was a victim of Israel's Mossad, Western intelligence sources tell TIME. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an expert on a phase of uranium enrichment, perished on a Tehran street on Wednesday after an assassin in a passing motorcycle attached a magnetized explosive to the side of his Peugeot 405. "Yeah, one more," a senior Israeli official said with a smile. "I don't feel sad for him."
Wednesday's attack followed the pattern of previous operations planned by Mossad and carried out over the past two years by Iranians trained and paid by Israel's spy agency, according to intelligence sources. The targets were chosen from the ranks of scientists seen as crucial to Iran's nuclear effort — the country's top physicist, Majid Shahriari, was killed by a magnetized bomb in October 2010 — then shadowed for weeks to determine their routines and points of vulnerability.
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A year ago, Iranian television broadcast the confession of one alleged agent who described studying a scale model of the home of the scientist he helped assassinate by hiding a bomb on a motorcycle outside the front door. "It was the exact copy of the real one, even the size, material, its color, the tree next to it, its asphalt, the street curb, the bridge," said Majid Jamali Fashi on the air. He said he viewed the model in Mossad's headquarters in Tel Aviv, which he described in detail. Intelligence sources confirmed Fashi's involvement in a Mossad cell that the sources claim was revealed to Iran by a third country.
Fashi was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of nuclear physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who suffered mortal shrapnel wounds in front of his house on Jan. 12, 2010. Three other nuclear scientists heard magnetic bombs snap onto their car doors during their commute to work — a method Fashi claimed he had also been taught by the Israelis. Besides Ahmadi-Roshan and Shahriari, the victims include Fereydoon Abbasi, a university professor who survived and was promoted to head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
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A fourth scientist, Darush Rezaei-Nejad, was killed outside his home by shots fired from a motorcycle on July 23, 2011. A student of electrical engineering, his connection to the Iranian nuclear program remains a matter of dispute.
The similarities among the attacks were not lost on Iranian authorities, who immediately blamed both Israel and the U.S. for Wednesday's attack. "The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists and is the work of the Zionists," Tehran's Deputy Governor Safar Ali Baratlou was quoted as saying by the Fars News Agency.
Israel is officially silent on the incident. However, its top spokesman for the country's military posted this on Facebook: "Don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but for sure I am not shedding a tear." The Obama Administration insisted it had nothing to do with the attack. "The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declared. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her denial of U.S. involvement "categorical."
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The contrast in responses reflects the good-cop, bad-cop roles the allies have assumed in the international effort to dissuade Iran from pushing ahead with its nuclear program. While Washington leads the global effort to press economic sanctions on Tehran, Israeli leaders frequently make thinly veiled suggestions that it may not be able to restrain itself from launching military action on Iran; they also never bother to deny a leading role in covert efforts to slow the nuclear program. In addition to the assassination campaign, Western intelligence sources say Israel was responsible for the massive explosion at a missile base outside Tehran in November.
In an interview published in a Hebrew-language newspaper on Thursday, however, the U.S. ambassador to Israel took pains to portray Washington and Jerusalem in sync on the need for action. The interview was framed by news that Iran was beginning to enrich uranium in a new facility outside Qom, built under a rock shield 200-ft. (60 m) thick. "We see eye to eye with Israel regarding the severity of the threat and the importance of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear country," U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro was quoted as telling Ben Caspit in
Ma'ariv. "President Obama has consistently stated that he will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he means every word. The best way to do this, and everybody agrees, including Israel and the United States and Europe, is through economic sanctions. We need to show the Iranian government that it must choose between the nuclear plan and the country's economic existence. We've increased the sanction to an unprecedented degree, and the pressure will rise even more in the future. We haven't yet achieved our goals, that much is clear, and the news today about the enrichment of uranium at the site near Qom proves that. Iran has further breached its international obligations in a very serious way."
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And if the sanctions don't work?
"Because stopping a nuclear Iran is so important, we've said this before and I'm saying it again, all options are open. All the possibilities." said Shapiro. "And I'll say more than that, we are examining these possibilities actively, and we are drawing up the necessary plans to ensure that all these options exist, and I'm not ruling out any option. President Obama has clearly said that he will do everything and take every necessary step to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons, and I don't think that it has anything to do with the timing of the elections or any other political issue, it's important to a lot of these issues."
Caspit said he asked the ambassador what he meant by "planning the options," and whether they are also training for the implementation of these options, as foreign reports say the Israeli air force has been doing for some time. "Shapiro was quiet, and then said that America doesn't need all that much training: 'We have a massive military presence in the Persian Gulf, right?'"
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2104372,00.html#ixzz1jOinwLKj
NewsCore) - Iran on Saturday claimed to have evidence that the killing of nuclear scientist Professor Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan this week was planned and executed by the CIA, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Iran's foreign ministry sent two letters -- one to the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests, and another to the UK foreign ministry -- strongly protesting against the killing of the 32-year-old scientist.
In the letter to the UK foreign ministry, Iran claimed that the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists began directly after the beginning of a British intelligence campaign against the Islamic Republic.
In the letter to the Swiss embassy, Iran claimed that "authentic documents and reliable information" showed that the killing of Roshan was carried out by the CIA, according to IRNA.
On Friday, a crowd chanted "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" at a funeral procession in Tehran for the slain nuclear scientist.
Roshan was a deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. He died in Wednesday's attack when a motorcyclist reportedly put a bomb beneath the scientist's vehicle.
Washington denied any involvement in the attack and strongly condemned the violence. An Israeli military spokesman said his country was not responsible.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists were killed in recent years in attacks that the Islamic Republic blamed on the US and Israel, which suspect Iran's atomic program masks a drive for a weapons capability.
Two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs to the car of an Iranian university professor working at a key nuclear facility, killing him and wounding two people on Wednesday, a semiofficial news agency reported.
The January 12 Tehran assassination by bomb blast of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor of physics at the University of Tehran, invites the prospect of new tensions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program (Islamic Republic News Agency [IRNA], January 12). The assassination comes as Tehran faces the possibility of new U.N. Security Council sanctions following the passing of the latest deadline to respond to economic and technological incentives in return for Tehran’s cooperation over its nuclear program. Who killed Ali-Mohammadi and why? And what implications could his death have in regard to the ongoing nuclear negotiations?
The Iranian regime described Ali-Mohammadi as a “staunch” supporter of the Islamic Republic who was involved in Iran’s nuclear program, insinuating that foreign agents were involved in his murder (IRNA, January 12; Press TV [Tehran], January 12). Shortly after the explosion, Iran’s foreign ministry blamed Israel and the United States for carrying out the operation with the help of a pro-monarchist group that seeks to re-establish the Iranian monarchy (IRNA, January 12). In other media accounts, the assassination was described as a desperate act by the Western powers to hold back the country’s nuclear research (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting [IRIB], January 12; Fars News Agency, January 12). While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Ali-Mohammadi as a martyr, the hardliners in power identified the culprits as those who seek to inhibit Iran’s scientific progress and prevent the country from developing nuclear technology (Fars, January 16). A number of conservative news websites compared the terrorist act with Israel’s airstrikes on Iraqi and Syrian nuclear facilities and alleged attacks on Egyptian nuclear scientists (Tabnak [Tehran], January 12). Hardline analysts were also quick to compare the bombing with the June 2009 disappearance of nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who Iran claims was kidnapped by Saudi Arabia on behalf of the United States (Payvand News, January 12).
To what extent Israel and the United States were involved remains unknown. Israel has so far refused to comment on the assassination and other possible covert operations designed to eliminate key human elements in Iran’s nuclear program (Haaretz, January 14). The U.S. State Department has publicly ruled out the possibility of American involvement, calling Iran’s accusations "absurd” (Haaretz February 2, 2009; Haaretz, January 14).
In many ways, the assassination leaves a puzzling mix of questions, beginning with why an academic at a research university, with no political links with the state, would be a target of assassination. As the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency has publicly explained, Ali-Mohammadi had no associations with the state’s nuclear program [1] In fact, Ali-Mohammadi’s latest research largely involved participation in a scientific project led by an academic association based in Jordan (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East - SESAME), which conducts experimental science in cooperation with other leading academics in the Middle East, including Israeli researchers (Payvand, January 12). Not only did Ali-Mohammadi have no relations with Iran’s secretive nuclear program (run by the Revolutionary Guard), but according to a close colleague, he also had little expertise in nuclear physics. [2]
Ali-Mohammadi was not a supporter of the regime. New evidence underlines the possibility that Ali-Mohammadi had become increasingly involved in the opposition movement since the disputed 2009 elections. In his “Kaleme” website, Mir-Hussain Mousavi (the defeated 2009 presidential candidate and current leader of the opposition) described Ali-Mohammadi as a strong supporter and prominent member of the Green (opposition) movement (al-Jazeera, January 14). Mousavi also described the murder as “part of an extensive plan” to stifle dissent (Radio Zamaneh, January 15). To many reformists, the murder of Ali-Mohammadi, who is known to have participated in the post-election street-demonstrations, serves as a warning to other opposition figures and may herald a campaign of assassinations reminiscent of the 1999 wave of murders charged to Iran’s intelligence-security forces (Radio Zamaneh, January 15). The latest attack may have been meant to shift the public’s attention from Iran’s domestic turmoil to an external enemy in an attempt to stroke nationalist sentiment in a state that has lost considerable credibility since the elections.
This latest development raises new concern about the possible emergence of new tensions between Iran and the West. With the post-election unrest and subsequent crackdowns pointing to the formation of an increasingly militaristic regime, Iranian accusations of foreign assassination could trigger a conflict with the potential to destabilize the region. Moreover, the assassination of a prominent scientist could aggravate Iran’s already volatile political situation regardless of the party responsible. With the hardliners in power evidently ready to adopt a more combative foreign policy in the months to come, it is conceivable that future assassinations, whether generated internally or externally, could be used by the regime to stifle dissent at home in order to restore the stability the regime has lost since the elections.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpps/news/iran-claims-cia-assassinated-nuclear-scientist-dpgonc-20120114-gc_17055950#ixzz1kyuTiwwg
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=35935&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=138d091489
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0112/Was-Israel-behind-Iran-nuclear-scientist-s-assassination
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