Who's Killing Iran's Scientists?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

Source: The Daily Beast

A group of masked assassins on motorcycles pulls up to an idling car. Inside the car is a nuclear scientist and his wife.

One of the assassins reaches out and attaches a magnetic bomb to the side of the car.

BOOM! The bomb explodes, killing the scientist and wounding his wife.

A plume of black smoke rises to the sky as the masked assassins speed away.


Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-30/iranian-nuclear-scientists-attacked-did-us-israel-plan-assasination/

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Did our president order/turn a blind eye to this?

Never mind the foreign policy fallout what about the legal ramifications here in the US?

[Ian David]

1. This isn't good, but it's preferable to bombing an entire country into the stone age. n/t

[midnight]

3. No this isn't good, and either is our thinking that we can

be the only bombers..... Think about the new wave of republicans coming in office when you consider the bombs we have.....

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. I can't find anything definitive

What are US and international laws on assassinating non-combat civilians?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. What makes you assume it is the US?

There are any number of nations out there that are fearful of a nuclear Iran with medium range missiles.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. The article.

And the fact that I just don't know where the administration stands these days.

One minute they insist on civilian trials for suspected foreign-born terrorists (which I support) but the next minute they issue assassination orders for US citizens, i.e. Awalaki (which I can't fathom).

So I can't bring myself to dismiss the possibility out of hand as I might have once done.

[RKP5637]

2. It's been done for regime change by various nations, so

this would not seem too strange whomever did it to stop/slow their progress.

[CJvR]

4. My spontaneous reaction.

Mossad or Saudi proxies, seems like a very professional operation. Also it depends a bit on where these fellows fits in. Loyal minions of the regime or potential troublemakers? It is not entirely impossible that the Revolutionary guards would blow up suspected traitors - someone had to manually introduce that worm into the Iranian systems.

[dorkulon]

8. Probably Mossad.

They killed a guy in Paris just because he had the same name as an Iraqi nuclear scientist, a few years back.

[BridgeTheGap]

9. That's my guess too. Iran now has missiles capable of hitting Israel BUT

Israel has nuclear weapons. I'm sure the U.S. "advised" Israel to take some other route rather than a repeat of when the bombed the facility in Iraq years ago.

[Igel]

10. Rohrshach.

X happens. Since we have pretty much no facts for induction and insufficient facts for deduction, let's go hog wild with abduction. Reasoning that looks like reasoning but isn't.

Deduction: "Minky is a dog. All dogs are mortal. Minky is mortal."

Abduction: "All dogs are mortal. Minky is mortal. Minky is a dog." Wrong: Minky is a cat. Nothing in either premise restricted mortality to dogs. But "Minky is a dog" is a hypothesis--and a testable one, too, assuming that we actually have the ability to perform the tests.

The presuppositions seem to be that only the US does bad things, only the US would care to do things, and only the US would be in a position to do bad things. Ability, motive, and opportunity. Let's consider these in turn, shall we, before trying out the logic, "Only the US could kill an Iranian scientist. An Iranian scientist has been killed. Therefore the US has killed the Iranian scientist."

Magnetic bombs. Where have we seen those before? Oh, I know: Iraqi insurgents use them! Since the insurgents have ties to all sorts of jihadi groups--and those groups have ties to all sorts of very much non-jihadi groups--perhaps there's been some illicit technology sharing? Or perhaps, since it's not a very difficult idea to implement, they're just copy-cats. The US could do that. Other than that, we need bomb-making skills, masks, and motorcycles. The US has them all. However, none of those are restricted to Washington, DC's skill set. Most of them, in fact, seem to be rather widespread skills.

Now, who dislikes Iran? Well, we know of lots of people that dislike Iran. Some we love to hate--the military-industrial complex in the US, Israel, even Saudi Arabia. Let's not forget that Iraqi Sunnis don't like Iraq, and neither do some Iraqi Arab Shi'ites--or that Iran has a large and fairly not-very-empowered Arab minority. AQ and other Salafists tend to take a dim view of Shi'ites. And, if you like fun, try this: If Hezbollah was behind Hariri's death in Lebanon, you can bet that the Iranians knew and approved; so let's say that it's a non-Hezbollah-loving Lebanese Xian group. As much evidence for them as for anybody else. If you don't like them and want to stay domestic and non-Arab, try some disenchanted Balochis or a disgruntled Kurd. Hell, it might be that the scientist in question was suspected of being not so loyal. Or maybe one of the murderers was pissed that she turned him down when he asked for a bj, and he was afraid that she'd tell his boss, her husband. Who knows? So that's motive.

Then there's opportunity. Getting two or more operatives, masks, motorcycles (and fuel!) in Tehran isn't dreadfully hard, so making the opportunity isn't a big deal. Hell, I could probably get into the country and stick a magnet to a car before riding off on a bike, although it'd probably be easy to ID me after the fact. IDing the scientists might be a bit tough and actually meeting up with him on the streets might be tricky. Might not be. Depends on what the Iranian and other presses say about their scientists and who knows who. Perhaps the local baker knows who worked there; maybe a waiter was a stoolie because he needed some cash. The US could certainly do it. I suspect that Vanuatu could do it, with a few minutes' concentrated effort. Opportunity is a bit more restricted, but barely noticeably so.

So it really goes back to motive, and for that there are a lot of choices. In writing papers in grad school I was told to make sure that I didn't bother to present everybody else's work, instead it was important to push my own point and show that it was not only likely but correct. However, in so doing I had to take into account other POVs and dwell on crucial evidence that they failed to handle in any easily divined way, or show that my idea handled all their data and more, or at the very least dealt with all of the available data in a simpler way--in other words, falsify them or at least harrass them. "The US had to do it" handles the data, but there's no evidence that shows crucially that others aren't just as capable or likely to have done it; there's no reason to think that the US would have an especially easier time pulling it off.

Abduction. It's a kind of fake logic.