Thread: A killer blow against US-Iran ties

A killer blow against US-Iran ties


By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times
January 14, 2010



The assassination of Dr Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a Tehran University nuclear physicist, on Tuesday, blamed by the Iranian government on the United States and Israel and their fifth-column allies inside Iran, is the latest sign of an ominous, growing shadow war with Iran over its nuclear standoff with the West.

The US has officially denied any role in the incident in which a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorbike went off near the 50-year-old professor's home in the Qeytariyeh neighborhood in northern Tehran.

Bill Burton, the White House deputy press secretary, called the accusation "absurd", saying he would not comment further as he did not want to "prejudge any information about what actually happened".

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehman-Parast, commented, "In the preliminary investigations there can be seen the traces of the triangular villainy of the US, the Zionist regime and their agents in Iran's terror attack."

Only a few days ago, there were unconfirmed reports that Iran was slowing down its nuclear fuel program as a gesture of goodwill to give diplomacy some breathing space, this after intense lobbying by senior European Union diplomats involved in the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Iran is being urged to halt its uranium-enrichment program, which many believe is designed to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Tehran vigorously dismisses.

Tuesday's assassination could torpedo this development-in-the-making and reinstate Iran on its previous stubborn stance. It also sends a message that the forces opposed to any breakthrough between the US and Iran are simply too formidable.

Iran's Fars news agency quoted a spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization as rejecting "rumors" that Mohammadi had been employed by the organization, appearing to pour cold water on speculation that Mohammadi had been killed in an attempt to derail Iran's nuclear program.

However, Asia Times Online correspondent Mahan Abedin, an Iran expert, observes that, while this is true, Mohammadi had a string of affiliations to scientific and research organizations at the center of Iran's nuclear program, such as the Theoretical Physics Institute headed by Mohammad Javad Larijani.

There have also been reports that Mohammadi was linked to the Iranian opposition, notably to Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former radical prime minister and now a reformist opposition leader.

Mahan comments, "The opposition led by Mousavi is by and large loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In any case, it is worlds apart from the illoyal dissidents based in the West. The loyal opposition inside Iran does not dispute the foundational strategic and ideological imperatives that underpin the Iranian nuclear program. But all of this is beside the point. All the available evidence suggests that the assassinated scientist was apolitical and wholly devoted to his scientific work."

Initially, the Anjoman-e-Padeshahi (Monarchical Association), a group that seeks to re-establish the Pahlavi reign (the pro-US shah regime prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979), announced in a statement that its "Tondar Commandos" were behind the assassination. Subsequently, sources inside the group denied any involvement. A leading Iranian opposition group, the Iraq-based Mujahideen-e-Khalq, is unlikely to have been involved as it claims that since 2001 it has renounced violence.

Tuesday's assassination follows the disappearance of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, who went missing while on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in late May 2009. Tehran has adamantly claimed that he was abducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Unconfirmed reports in December said Amiri had been transferred into the US government's custody by Saudi authorities.

The two cases could be viewed as an attack on Iran's human nuclear assets, as the next best substitute for outright military invasion. There is also a relentless public relations campaign in the West against Iran's nuclear program.

In the past month alone there have been front-page stories in The Times of London, The New York Times and The Washington Post with "revelations" of neutron triggers, Iran's purchase of uranium from Kazakhstan, and most recently, "the maze of tunnels" where Iran has purportedly buried "most" of its nuclear complex - little of which stands the weight of critical scrutiny.

The neutron trigger document, it now turns out, was not an original document, but a doctored one, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has had extensive access to Iran's nuclear facilities, has informed this author that the New York Times story on "nuclear tunnels" is news to them.

This is not to say that Iran has not taken some counter-measures with regard to a military threat. (See Iran places trust in 'passive defense' Asia Times Online, January 13, 2010). However, as confirmed by Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the small centrifuge facility known as Fordow near the city of Qom is Iran's only facility planted in bunkers, and even it is still under construction, with the completion date some two years away.

History repeats itself, and there is nothing to indicate that the Western media have learned any lessons from the fiasco of toeing the official lines on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction eight years ago that were used in part to justify the US-led invasion in 2003.

There is a grave danger in this shadow war, in that should it get much worse, Iran could decide to strike back where it can, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, with the US and Iran practically co-dependent in regional security, imperiled by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is not in the interests of either country to allow a worsening of their relations at this delicate juncture.

Linking possible new sanctions on Iran with Iranian democracy issues, as inferred from the latest pronouncements of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is also a wrong move. For one thing, it further erodes the legitimacy of the pro-democracy movement and strengthens the hands of their hardline oppressors. Clinton's call for "targeted sanctions" on Iran's ruling elite may be on the US's foreign policy wish list, but they can hardly find a wide audience at the United Nations, where China has expressly opposed any new sanctions, as has, to a lesser extent, Russia.

To counter this, the US is saying that unless new sanctions are approved, there is always the option of military action, as per a recent statement by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, that the US is engaged in the preparation of military contingencies against Iran and that it is keeping "all options open".

The notion that Iran will back down in the face of such threats is an inheritance of the previous US administration of George W Bush; it did not work then, nor is it likely to work now.

The Barack Obama administration would be best-served to salvage its self-wrecking ship of Iran diplomacy by veering back to its initial intuition of what works with Iran, that is, persuasive diplomacy. Unfortunately, as the smoke of the bomb explosion that killed Mohammadi clears in Tehran, the hazy thickness of an undeclared shadow war with Iran grows.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 200 is now available.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LA14Ak02.html

Israel did it. no doubt.

Originally Posted by Tbow009

Israel did it. no doubt.

That was my first thought! This sounds like something they would do.

Who cares who did it, at least he's not capable anymore of helping with the R&D of nuclear war head development and delivery for Iran.