WarSclerotic

Two nuclear scientists targeted in Tehran

US, British and Israeli secret services are getting set for Iran to retaliate for the attacks of which they are accused on its top nuclear physicists. debkafile‘s Iranian sources report that the last straw for Tehran were the attacks of Nov. 29, which killed Dr. Majid Shariari, head of the national offensive against cyber attack by Stuxnet, and injured Prof. Fereydoun Abbasi, director of centrifuge operation at Nananz, in the heart of the Iranian capital.

Iran also has an unsettled score for the murder eleven months ago of Prof. Massoud Ali Mohamadi, by the remote-control detonation of a booby-trapped motorbike parked outside his home.

In the last ten days, the Iranians have mounted a propaganda campaign of rising intensity accusing the CIA, MI6 and Mossad of combining forces to liquidate its senior nuclear scientists inside the country during 2010. A Western intelligence source commented Sunday, Dec.12 that Tehran would not have waged this campaign so publicly unless it was planning imminent retribution. He reported: “All three Western agencies have taken special measures to safeguard their scientists and senior diplomats across the world against assassins.”

The Iranians are fingering the US, Israel and the UK, in unfolding blasts of vilification:

The Six Power nuclear talks with Iran opened in Geneva on Dec. 12 with an 80-minute tirade by Iran’s representative Saad Jalili, Iran’s National Security Adviser and head of its delegation. He declared, “Iran has so far lost 13,000 citizens in terrorist attacks… that (are) supported by the West. The same trend is repeating again.” Turning to European Union executive Catherine Ashton, he said, “The recent assassination of the two nuclear scientists was a different case compared with the previous cases.”

To explain why they were different, he claimed that the MI6 director John Sawers and Israel had confessed they were behind those attacks. Jalili went on to ask: “Why has the world kept mum about the terrorist action and the straightforward confession of a number of countries about their involvement in this act”?

debkafile‘s intelligence source pointed out: No regime, and certainly not Iran, could think of openly charging that 13,000 of its citizens were murdered – and then let the culprits go unpunished.” By naming the head of the British secret service and Israel as the culprits, Tehran is telling London and Jerusalem they have crossed red lines and will have to face the consequences.
A day earlier, Alil Salehi, Director of Iran’s Nuclear Commission and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, both spoke sharply about the involvement of foreign agencies in the attacks on Iranian scientists and their modes of operation, such as “sticky bombs.”

Finally on Saturday, Dec. 11, Interior Minister Mostafa Najjar claimed that,”Arrested agents confessed that they received equipment and training from the Mossad, the CIA, and MI6.” He promised special measures to provide protection for the elite and scientists.

debkafile‘s intelligence sources: This is the first time Tehran has claimed the existence of a joint US, Israeli British clandestine mechanism collecting intelligence for assassinations in Tehran. It indicates that the country is wide open to such activities and its security services helpless to combat them.