WarSclerotic

On Monday morning, life imitated the movies. Two Iranian scientists were driving in separate cars on different routes in slow-moving traffic in northern Tehran. The physicists were on their way to Shahid Beheshti University, when two motorcyclists passed them. Apparently, the riders attached explosive devices to the vehicles of both professors, then detonated them through remote control as they zoomed off.

Mahid Shahriari was killed. His wife, travelling with him, was injured. At another location, the second scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, was injured along with his wife. Both Shahriari and Abbasi worked on Iran’s nuclear program.

The attackers escaped.

Iran wasted no time in blaming Israel and the United States. The semi-official Fars news agency described the motorcyclists as perpetrators of terrorist attacks on behalf of “the United States and the Zionist regime.” The charge was echoed by Iranian Interior Minister Mustafa Mohammed-Najar, who spoke on state television, saying that “the CIA and Mossad have always been the enemies of Iran and constantly tried to sabotage our technological progress.”

Iran’s officials levelled similar charges against the United States and Israel three years ago, when a nuclear scientist named Ardeshin Hosseinpour died of gas poisoning, and also last January, when physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a remote-control bomb strapped to a parked motorcycle outside his residence. At that time, Tehran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, saw “signs of evilness by the triangle of the Zionist regime, America and their mercenaries in Iran in this terrorist incident.” He vowed that Iran would not be deterred from its nuclear efforts.

After this week’s assassination, it was Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, who warned Western powers and their allies not to “play with fire.” He declared that assassinating scientists would only “multiply our nuclear effort.”

In January, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner called the charges “absurd,” while Israel observed its usual “no comment” policy. I expect this pattern to continue, because the CIA is reluctant to admit complicity in targeted assassinations, while the Mossad isn’t only reluctant to admit participation but even to deny it. Aside from cultural factors too long to analyze in a newspaper column, Americans want to be liked and Israelis want to be respected. The latter believe, rightly or wrongly, that their strategy of never admitting what they did coupled with never denying what they didn’t might help them achieve it.

The ironic result is that many people who are well disposed towards Israel and America, and find Iran’s nuclear ambitions minimally worrisome and potentially catastrophic, nevertheless believe Iran’s charges. They take it for granted that some nuclear scientists, from Hosseinpour in 2007 to Shahriari this Monday, have been assassinated by Mossad and/or the CIA, just as the Iranians say they have been.

It’s possible, of course, but I’m not so sure.

Iran is an unholy mess, with rival factions locked into brutal power-struggles. The Islamic revolution is eating its own children just as voraciously as all other revolutions. Theocracy’s bearded mafiosos may be more sanctimonious than other crime families, but they’re just as

unscrupulous. I find it entirely conceivable that the assassinated scientists have fallen afoul of powerful competitors within the Revolutionary Guards, or that in the paranoid atmosphere of tyrannical societies filled with spies, snitches and inquisitors, they’ve come under suspicion of collaboration or pending betrayal. If so, eliminating suspected turncoats as martyrs would serve the regime far better than trying and executing scientists as traitors.

Riled by WikiLeaks’ revelations of neighbouring Saudi Arabia describing nuke-seeking Iran as the “head of the snake,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been quick to cry “disinformation.” Well, it takes one to know one. Disinformation of a kind that would never occur to the shrewdest operators in Western capitals, such as making up faux-WikiLeaks disclosures to sow dissension in the Muslim world, would be routine in Ahmadinejad’s neck of the woods. Blowing up a nuclear scientist for whatever reason of palace intrigue or perhaps suspected betrayal, and then blaming it on a conspiracy between Great Satan and Little Satan, would be all in a day’s work for an Oriental despot, Tehran-style.

Is that what I think happened Monday morning? I’ve no idea what happened. I only think this could have happened as easily and plausibly as two Mossad motorcyclists blowing two putative bomb-makers to kingdom come

But what if it was the targeted assassination of a nuclear scientist by a foreign intelligence agency? Would it be terrorism?

I don’t think so. It would be the targeted assassination of a nuclear scientist. Unlawful where it occurs, for sure; murder, possibly; terrorism no.

Terrorism is targeting noncombatants. It’s blowing up planes, bombing supermarkets, shooting people at prayer, assassinating film makers. Bombing enemy bomb-makers may be unlawful but it isn’t terrorism.

Is it wrong, then? Well — compared to what? Negotiation, persuasion, diplomacy are better — if they work. If they don’t, blockades, invasions, sabotaging installations, aerial bombardment and pre-emptive nuclear strikes are far worse in terms of collateral damage.

Is targeted assassination wrong compared to letting rogue states build nuclear weapons?

Excuse me. Is this a serious question?