Tinker, Tailor, Physicist, Chemist, Student . . .

I am obliged to Michael Ledeen of PJ Media and even more obliged to Potkin Azarmehr, a British-Iranian blogger, who is the source for this story even though it shows me up for the sort of idiot who jumps to conclusions without evidence. (Surely not, I hear you murmur – er, you did murmur, didn’t you?)  Alas, my guilt is all too clear because on the news of the murder of yet another Iranian physicist I assumed, along with the rest of the MSM, that those peerless, ruthless, super-efficient MOSSAD agents had been at work.  Well, to be fair, they might, but then again, they might not.

As Mr. Ledeen stresses:

Tehran is an armed camp.  There are security forces, check points, men with weapons and cell phones, and countless informers, all over the place.  If a citizen makes a phone call that is the least bit suspect to the regime, that citizen is located, on average, in less than half an hour, and sometimes in a few minutes.  Several Iranian officials and scientists involved in the nuclear project have been blown up in the last two years, and the killers have always gotten clean away.  Indeed, the latest assassins killed their man just a few feet from the headquarters buildings of the Intelligence Ministry.  That’s quite an accomplishment.  If agents of a foreign intelligence service are doing it, they’re better than Tom Cruise’s fictional operatives in the Mission: Impossible movies.

‘Titchy Tom’ better than the dreaded MOSSAD?  Oh no, tell me it ain’t so!

To be serious, when you think about it, and the fact that so far there have been no arrests in a city that is crawling with security police and their hundreds of informants, it is rather odd and stretches one’s credulity to think that MOSSAD can seemingly come and go and murder as they see fit.  But there are other oddities to this story, as Potkin Azarmehr points out in some detail.  The first victim:

Ali-Mohammadi was in fact a Quantum field theorist and elementary particle physicist. His academic achievements included some 53 research articles and numerous translations of text books like the Modern Quantum  Mechanics. He was NOT in any way related to the nuclear weapon or the nuclear power industry, nor was his name on any sanctions list. More importantly, he was an active supporter of the Green Movement. Ali Mohammadi actually actively encouraged and organised his students to take part in the post-‘election’ protests. He was one of the 240 university professors who publicly and openly expressed their support for Mir Hussein Moussavi, one of the main leaders of the Green Movement, now under house arrest with his wife.

He was also part of an international scientific group concerned with some obscure piece of physics which included scientists from Israel and whose meetings he attended regularly.  He seems, in retrospect, hardly likely to have been a member of Iran’s top secret nuclear bomb programme.

The second assassination victim was:

Majid Shahriari, again was a theoretical quantum physicist and not on any sanctions lists, although unlike Ali Mohammadi, he had no interest in politics and supported neither side during the post-election protests, but he too worked alongside other regional scientists on the SESAME project [the same international programme to which Ali-Mohammadi was a member.

He was killed in his car broad daylight in a crowded street by two men on a motor bike who attached a ‘sticky bomb’ to his driver’s door and then drove off, never to be seen again!  Interestingly, the authorities made no public appeal for witnesses.  On the very same day, another ‘assassination’ attempt was made but failed.  The ‘victim’ in this case was definitely attached to the Iranian nuclear programme but he survived unscathed.  The authorities said it was a bomb attack but his car only showed some bullet-holes.  A report on a quasi-government site giving somewhat contradictory reports was quickly removed.  According to Potkin Azarmehr:

It seems [this ‘victim’s] assassination was a fake and staged attempt to justify the Western/Mossad hit squad story to give it more credence.

The next victim might (or there again, might not) be a case of mistaken identity.  His name was Dariush Rezaee Nejad who was shot dead in front of his family and not only was he nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear efforts, he was actually a student studying for his MSc in electrical engineering.  A man with a very similar name is a nuclear physicist but he lived in an entirely different area of the city and anyway was out of the country when the shooting occurred.

The latest victim, according to Mr. Ledeen’s story was:

a chemist, not a physicist, and his main connection to the nuclear program was administrative, not technical:  he worked in the purchasing office for the Natanz operation.  He was important enough to have been interviewed by IAEA inspectors, and after his death, Iranian leaders alleged that the IAEA people had passed on classified information to the assassins.  But this isn’t very convincing; administrative officers are a dime a dozen, after all.  Blow up one, you get a dozen applicants for the position. More mysteries.

However, the cry through the ages reverberates once more – ‘It was the Jews wot dunnit!’  And yet . . . and yet . . . Iran produces not one jot, one tittle or even a tiny scintilla, of hard evidence to prove that the devilish cunning MOSSAD did the dirty deeds.  Of course, they might have done.  Because the fact is that no-one, as Mr. Ledeen is keen to stress, no-one has the slightest idea of who did it - and that includes me!

 

Comments

[dearieme]

It was Toni Blair.

[David Duff]

Don't you mean Toni Blumenthal, the well-known MOSSAD agent, DM?

[Andra]

Does it matter?

[David Duff]

If it doesn't matter to you, Andra, then it doesn't matter!

[JK]

This might help David:

http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news

[David Duff]

Hmmn! If the ruling clique in Tehran says it is all the work of terrorists backed by Israel my only response is - maybe but . . . !