WarSclerotic

MI chief: Iran, Hezbollah providing Assad … JPost – Middle East.

    Iran and Hezbollah are actively assisting Syrian President Bashar Assad and providing him with weaponry as part of an effort to ensure that he survives in face of growing resistance and protests, head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said on Wednesday.

Kochavi spoke at the graduation ceremony for IDF intelligence officers.
“The radical axis is trying to retain its power and as time passes, Iran and Hezbollah increase their efforts to help the Assad regime survive by providing intelligence, weaponry, and other capabilities- to the point where they are actively involved,” Kochavi said.

The IDF intelligence chief said it was possible that in the long term the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East would have a positive outcome but in the immediate term “the dangers are increasing.”

Kochavi’s comments came a day after Turkish customs officials intercepted four trucks suspected of carrying military equipment from Iran to Syria.

The governor of Kilis province said the trucks were confiscated at the Oncupinar border crossing into Syria after police received information about their cargo, according to Dogan news agency.

Bomb kills Iran nuclear scientist as crisis mounts – chicagotribune.com.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – An Iranian nuclear scientist was blown up in his car by a motorbike hitman on Wednesday, prompting Tehran to blame Israeli and U.S. agents but insist the killing would not derail a nuclear program that has raised fears of war and threatened world oil supplies.

The fifth daylight attack on technical experts in two years, the killer’s magnetic bomb delivered a targeted blast to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan’s silver sedan as he drove down a busy street close to Tehran University during the morning rush hour. The chemical engineer’s passenger also died, Iranian media said, while a passer-by was slightly hurt.

Israel, whose military chief had warned Iran only on Tuesday to expect more mysterious mishaps, declined to comment. While many analysts saw Israeli or Western involvement as eminently plausible, the role of local or other Middle Eastern hands in a deadly shadow war of bluff and sabotage could not be ruled out.

The killing, which left debris hanging in trees and body parts on the road, came in a week of heightened tension:

Iran has started an underground uranium enrichment plant and sentenced an American to death for spying; Washington and Europe have stepped up efforts to cripple Iran’s oil exports for its refusal to halt work that the West says betrays an ambition to build nuclear weapons, not the power plants Iran claims.

Iran has threatened to choke the West’s supply of Gulf oil, drawing a U.S. warning that its navy was ready to open fire to prevent any blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

However, analysts saw the latest assassination, which would have taken some preparation, as part of a longer-running, cover effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear development program that has also included suspected computer viruses and mystery explosions.

While fears of war have forced up oil prices, the region has seen periods of saber-rattling and limited bloodshed before without reaching all-out conflict. However, a willingness in Israel, which sees an imminent Iranian atom bomb as a threat to its existence, to attack Iranian nuclear sites, with or without U.S. backing, has heightened the sense that a crisis is coming.

“HEINOUS ACT”

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, which has failed to persuade the West that its quest for nuclear power has no hidden military goal, said the killing of Ahmadi-Roshan would not deter it: “We will continue our path without any doubt … Our path is irreversible,” it said in a statement carried on television.

“The heinous acts of America and the criminal Zionist regime will not disrupt our glorious path … The more you kill us, the more our nation will awake.”

First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, quoted by IRNA news agency, said: “Iran’s enemies should know they cannot prevent Iran’s progress by carrying out such terrorist acts.”

Preparing for its first national election since a disputed presidential vote in 2009 brought street protests against 30 years of clerical rule, Iran’s leaders are struggling to contain internal tensions. Defiance of Israel and Western powers plays well with many voters in the nation of 76 million.

Israel, whose Mossad intelligence agency has a history of covert killings abroad, declined comment on Wednesday’s bombing.

On Tuesday, armed forces chief Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz was quoted as telling members of parliament: “For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.”

There was no immediate reaction to the early morning attack from the United States. Its ally Britain, whose Tehran embassy was ransacked in November, called suggestions of London’s involvement “baseless” and condemned the killing of civilians.

MOTORCYCLE HITMAN

The attack nonetheless, bore some of the hallmarks of the work of sophisticated intelligence agencies capable of circumventing Iran’s own extensive security apparatus and also showing some apparent care to limit the harm to passers-by.

While witnesses spoke of a frighteningly loud explosion at 8:20 a.m. (11:50 EST) and parts of the Peugeot 405 sedan ended up in the branches of the trees lining Gol Nabi Street, much of the car was left intact. The containment of the blast to the vehicle suggested a charge designed both to be sure of killing the occupants but also to limit serious injury to those targeted.

Witnesses said a motorcycle, from which the rear pillion passenger reached out to stick the device to the side of the car, made off into the heavy commuter traffic.

Though the scientist killed — the fourth in five such attacks since January 2010 — was only 32, Iranian media described him as having a senior role at the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, near Tehran. The semi-official news agency Mehr said Ahmadi-Roshan had recently met officials of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

IAEA officials could not confirm that, however.

Analysts say that killing individual scientists — especially those whose lack of personal protection suggests a relatively junior role — is unlikely to have much direct impact on Iran’s nuclear program, which Western governments allege is seeking to enrich enough uranium highly enough to let it build weapons.

COVERT WAR

Sabotage — like mysterious reported explosions at military facilities or the Stuxnet computer virus widely suspected to have been deployed by Israel and the United States to disrupt nuclear facilities in 2010 — may have had more direct effects.

However, assassinations may be intended to discourage Iranians with nuclear expertise from working on the program.

Bruno Tertrais from France’s Strategic Research Foundation said: “It certainly has a psychological effect on scientists working on the nuclear program.”

He cautioned, however, against assuming that Israel the United States or both were the instigators of the latest attack.

Trita Parsi, a U.S.-based expert on Iran, said the killing might, along with the heightened rhetoric of recent weeks, be part of a pattern ahead of a possible resumption of diplomatic negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program; some parties may want to improve their bargaining position, some may even see violence as a way of thwarting negotiations altogether, Parsi said.

Last month, Iran signaled a willingness to return to a negotiating process which stalled a year ago, though Western officials say a new round of talks is far from certain yet.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted by ISNA news agency as calling on the IAEA and other world bodies to condemn the latest killing: “If international bodies, in particular the IAEA, do not adopt a clear stance against this kind of assassination … then they are supporting this act with their silence and should be held accountable.”

The IAEA, which inspects Iranian nuclear sites including Natanz, declined to comment on the assassination, which comes ahead of an expected visit by a senior team of the Vienna-based agency to Tehran to discuss its growing concerns about suspected weapons-relevant activities in the Islamic Republic.

An IAEA official said on Monday that the team was expected in Iran “quite soon”.

SANCTIONS CAMPAIGN

Iran’s decision to carry out enrichment work deep underground at Fordow, near the holy city of Qom, could make it harder for U.S. or Israeli forces to carry out veiled threats to use force against Iranian nuclear facilities. The move to Fordow could narrow a time window for diplomacy to avert any attack.

The announcement on Monday that enrichment — a necessary step to make uranium into nuclear weapons — had begun at Fordow has given added impetus to Western efforts to impose an oil export embargo intended to pressure Tehran to negotiate a halt.

Oil prices have firmed. Brent crude is up more than 5 percent so far this year to above $113 a barrel.

The European Union on Tuesday brought forward to January 23 a ministerial meeting that is likely to confirm an embargo on oil purchases. Big importers of Iranian oil are moving to secure alternative supplies away from OPEC’s second biggest exporter.

Almost exactly two years ago, on January 12, 2010, physics lecturer Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle in Tehran. In November of that year, two daylight bomb attacks on the same day in Tehran killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another. A physics lecturer was shot dead in an attack in Tehran in July last year.

Despite public infighting within the Iranian establishment, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a clear statement on Monday that Iran had no intention of changing its nuclear course because of tightened foreign sanctions.

New U.S. sanctions have started to bite. The rial currency has lost 20 percent of its value against the dollar in the past week and Iran has threatened to shut the exit from the Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz, through which 35 percent of the world’s seaborne traded oil passes.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, visiting Beijing, appealed for Chinese cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation, though Chinese officials made clear that they still opposed the U.S. sanctions and would go on buying Iranian oil.

Russia, too, came out against the U.S.-led oil embargo.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran’s move to enrich uranium near the city of Qom was “especially troubling”.

“This step once again demonstrates the Iranian regime’s blatant disregard for its responsibilities and that the country’s growing isolation is self-inflicted,” she said.

Stepping up pressure on Tehran, U.S. President Barack Obama approved a law on New Year’s Eve that will sanction financial institutions dealing with Iran’s central bank, a move that makes it difficult for consumers to pay for Iranian oil.

Geithner is in Asia this week to drum up support for Washington’s efforts to stem the oil revenues flowing to Tehran.

After Beijing, Geithner may have an easier task in U.S. ally Japan, the next stop of his tour on Thursday, where a government source has said Tokyo will consider cutting back its Iranian oil purchases to secure a waiver from new U.S. sanctions.

Japan has already asked OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to supply it with more oil. South Korea is also considering alternative supplies.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Mitra Amiri in Tehran, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Israel, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna, Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Alastair Macdonald,; Editing by Peter Millership)

Le Figaro: Israel’s Mossad recruiting Iranian dissidents to work against Tehran regime – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

French report quotes security sources in Baghdad as saying that Israel is training Iranians in Iraq’s Kurdish region to operate against Ayatollah regime.

By Haaretz

The leading French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Wednesday that Israeli Mossad agents are recruiting and training Iranian dissidents from Iraq’s Kurdish region to work against the regime in Tehran.

Quoting a security source in Baghdad, Le Figaro reported that members of the Israeli intelligence agency are actively operating in Kurdistan and recruiting Iranian exiles in the region.

Foreign media has reported in the past that Israel’s Mossad has been recruiting Iranians in opposition to the Ayatollah regime in Tehran and uses them to carry out bombings.

On Wednesday, Iranian media reported that a nuclear scientist who was supervising a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility was killed by a car bomb in Tehran.

	Iranian soldiers take part in military drill, Dec. 30, 2011.
	Photo by: AFP

Fars cited witnesses as saying a motorcyclist stuck a magnetic bomb on the side of the car which then exploded, killing one and wounding two people inside.

Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo blamed Israel for the bombing, saying it was similar to ones targeting nuclear scientists a year ago.

“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists [Israelis]” Fars quoted Baratloo as saying.

The attack coincided with the second anniversary of a explosion that killed senior Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. Tehran has blamed the killings on Israel and the U.S. Both countries deny the accusations.

Turkey seizes alleged Iranian arms shipment to Syria – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Four Iranian trucks impounded on suspicion of carrying ‘military materials’ while crossing between Iran and Turkey.

By DPA

Turkish customs officials have impounded four Iranian-registered trucks on suspicion of carrying “military materials” to Syria, a foreign ministry official told dpa Wednesday.

The official confirmed that materials had been removed from the trucks and sent to the capital Ankara for examination, but was unable to say whether or not they had yet been identified as having a military use.

	A Saegheh ground-to-sea missile is fired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during a military maneuver, April 25, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

The four trucks were impounded at the Kilis border crossing between Iran and Turkey late Tuesday.

Turkish daily Milliyet reported that the trucks had been seized following a tip-off and contained military materials.

Last year, Turkey joined the U.S., European Union and Arab League in imposing wide-ranging sanctions against Syria, in response to that country’s crackdown on dissenters in which more than 5,000 have died according to United Nations estimates.

This includes a ban on the supply of materials with military use, the ending of transactions with Syria’s central bank and the suspension of credit agreements.

On Wednesday, a ship carrying weapons bound for the Syrian port of Latakia was also intercepted in Cyprus, according to a Lebanese radio report.

TIMELINE / Mysterious deaths and blasts linked to Iran’s nuclear program – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

A timeline of explosions that killed Iranian scientists and blasts that rocked Iranian nuclear facilities from January 12, 2010 to January 11, 2012.

By Haaretz

January 11, 2012

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, is killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Roshan was a university professor and nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province. Fars cites witnesses as saying a motorcyclist stuck a magnetic bomb on the side of the car which then exploded, killing one and wounding two people inside.

	An image grab taken from footage broadcast by Iran’s state-run Arabic-language Al-Alam TV on January 11, 2012, shows blood stains at the site where a nuclear scientist was killed.
	Photo by: AFP

December 11, 2011

At least seven people are killed in an explosion at a steel mill linked with Iran’s nuclear program in the city of Yazd.

November 28, 2011

An explosion rocks the western Iranian city of Isfahan, home to key nuclear facility, the semi-official Fars news agency reports, adding that the blast is heard in several parts of the city.

November 12, 2011

	An aerial photograph showing Iran’s uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan, March 30, 2005.
	Photo by: AP

A massive explosion at a military arms depot near Tehran kills 17 members of the Revolutionary Guards including a missile expert, and wounds 15, in what officials say they are treating as an accident.

July 23, 2011

Dariush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, is shot dead by two gunmen firing from motorcycles. State-run media initially identify the victim as Darioush Rezaei, a physics professor and expert in neutron transport, but later backtrack and name him Dariush Rezaeinejad, an electronics PhD student who participated in developing high-voltage switches, a key component to setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead.

May 24, 2011

An explosion blamed on a technical problem causes a fire at an oil refinery during a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One person is killed and six injured but Ahmadinejad was not hurt and appeared on state television giving a scheduled speech to mark the inauguration of a new phase of the refinery in Abadan, south-western Iran, close to the Iraqi border.

November 29, 2010

Majid Shahriyari, a nuclear engineer, is killed in a bomb attack on his car. In a separate attack, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, a nuclear scientist subject to UN sanctions because of what Western officials said is his involvement in suspected nuclear weapons research, is wounded in a car bomb attack. (Davani now heads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.)

January 12, 2010

Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi is assassinated in a bomb attack outside his Tehran home. Ali-Mohammadi publicly backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June presidential election, and Iranian pro-reform Web sites prior to the contentious government elections had listed his name among a list of 240 Tehran University teachers who supported the opposition.

	Majid Shahriari, who was killed in Tehran on November 29, 2010.

	People carrying the flag-draped body of slain Iranian physics professor, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, Jan. 14, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

Arab monitor quits Syria mission in disgus… JPost – Middle East.

    BEIRUT – An Arab League observer has left Syria, saying he had witnessed “scenes of horror” that he was powerless to prevent and that the Arab monitoring team sent to the country was not acting independently.

“I withdrew because I found myself serving the (Syrian) regime,” Anwar Malek told Al Jazeera television, still wearing the orange vest used by the Arab monitors.
“How was I serving the regime? I was giving the regime a greater chance to continue its killing and I could not prevent that,” the Algerian said in an interview at Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar.

The Arab League monitoring mission, now about 165 strong, began work on December 26. Its task is to verify if Syria is complying with an agreement to halt a crackdown on 10 months of protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad in which the United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed.

Asked why he had quit, Malek said: “The most important thing is to have human feelings of humanity. I spent more than 15 days in Homs… I saw scenes of horror, burnt bodies… I cannot leave behind my humanity in this sort of situation.”

Malek criticised the leader of the Arab League mission, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, whose suitability for the role had been questioned by human rights groups concerned about his past role in the conflict in Darfur.

“The head of the mission wanted to steer a middle course in order not to anger the (Syrian) authorities or any other side,” said Malek, who had already drawn attention for critical comments he posted on Facebook while still in Syria.

A UN official told the Security Council on Tuesday that Syria had accelerated its killing of protesters after the Arab monitors arrived, the US envoy to the United Nations said.

“The under-secretary-general noted that in the days since the Arab League monitoring mission has been on the ground, an estimated 400 additional people have been killed, an average of 40 a day, a rate much higher than was the case before their deployment,” ambassador Susan Rice told reporters in New York.

Rice was speaking after Lynn Pascoe, UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, briefed the 15-nation Security Council behind closed doors on Syria and other major crises. Rice said the figure did not include 26 people the authorities said were killed by a suicide bomber in Damascus last week.

Syria says it is facing a wave of “terrorism” by Islamists armed and manipulated from abroad who have killed 2,000 members of the security forces. Assad said in a speech on Tuesday that his country was the target of a foreign conspiracy.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report January 11, 2012, 12:09 PM (GMT+02:00)

Prof. Ahmadi Roshan’s car

Forty-eight hours after Iran began advanced uranium enrichment in the fortified Fordo bunker near Tehran, Prof. Mostapha Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the first uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was killed early Wednesday, Jan. 11 by a sticky bomb planted on his car by two motorcyclists. It exploded near the Sharif technological university in northern Tehran.
The pair made their escape. Prof. Ahmadi-Roshan was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be mysteriously assassinated in Tehran in two years. The same method of operation was used in a similar operation last year. Iran has blamed them all on Israel.

Tuesday, President Barack Obama received the Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal. Their conversation was shrouded in secrecy, although no one doubts it focused on the conflict with Iran and the urgency of keeping open the main export outlet for the world’s biggest oil suppliers, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz. The crisis in Syria must also have featured in their talks.

Shortly before the Saudi minister’s arrival, US Navy and Air Force chiefs shed some light on preparations for an imminent operation to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping.
debkafile‘s Washington sources report that the White House is bending over backwards to convince the skeptical Saudis that the president  is wiling to use military force to keep the vital waterway open, safeguard Gulf oil installations and exports and also prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The armed forces chiefs’ disclosures were integral to the White House effort.

US Navy Commander Adm. Jonathan Greenert said preparations for a clash in the Strait of Hormuz (between the US and Iran) were keeping him up at night. The US Admiral added: “If you’re asking me why I’m not sleeping at night, it’s because of the Strait of Hormuz and what’s happening in the Arabian (Persian) Gulf. I’m an organizer, a trainer and equipper. I’d make sure that our people have the right equipment to do the right thing. Our folks that transit in and around that area, I want to make sure that they’re able to (deal) with the things that they need to deal with, basically self-protection, counter-swarm, ASW-anti-submarine warfare.”

Air Force Commander General Norton Schwartz said that the US air force will obviously play a role in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open.

A few days earlier, on Jan. 8, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz for a period of time, but that if it did so the US would take action to reopen the Strait.

The US has therefore made clear that it is resolved to bring all its naval and air power to bear on ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open.

Riyadh, for its part, has promised to make up any shortfalls in oil sales generated by Western sanctions against Iran as its contribution to Washington’s campaign to convince Asian buyers such as India, Japan, China and South Korea to cut down on their purchases from Iran.

This pledge is not entirely plain sailing. It raises the question of how quickly Saudi Arabia can up its oil production. The expert assessment is six to nine months at least. Then there is the counter-threat from Tehran: If the US continues to lean on European and Asian governments for an embargo on Iranian oil, “not a single drop” of Saudi or Gulf oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz, say Iranian officials, thus pitting an Iranian blockade against a Western-led oil embargo.

Many Western experts treat Tehran’s threat as empty rhetoric arguing that closure of the vital strait would above all impact Iran’s own oil exports and slash its main source of revenue.

But debkafile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran is thinking in terms of a partial and selective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – rather than full-blown military action – in the certainty that the US and West will not  attack Iranian oil tankers or even detain them. Partial action, the Iranians believe, will be enough to trigger a major spike in world oil prices, send insurance rates for oil tankers sky high and bring the world’s energy markets under intolerable pressure.

Two years ago, a Revolutionary Guards speedboat from the island of Abu Musa in the northern outlet of Hormuz damaged the Japanese oil tanker Star M carrying oil from Saudi Arabia by firing a single missile.

Washington opted to keep the findings of its inquiry under wraps so as to keep down tensions around the Gulf export route, avoid exacerbating relations with Tehran and keep a cap on oil prices.

Syria munitions boat steers course from … JPost – International.

    NICOSIA – A ship reportedly carrying ammunition to Syria will be allowed to leave Cyprus after giving authorities assurances it will change its destination, a government official said on Wednesday.

Media reports said the cargo ship was carrying up to 60 tons of ammunition and was heading to the Syrian port city of Latakia. It docked off Cyprus on Tuesday amid rough seas.
“It has been decided the vessel will be released after the ship decided to change its destination and will not go to Syria,” Cypriot government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou told state radio.

He declined to comment on the cargo of the ship, which one newspaper said sailed from St. Petersburg about a month ago. He did not specify the reasons for the vessel switching course or its new destination.

Authorities would be in a position to issue more information later on Wednesday, he said.

The Politis daily reported the vessel, which it identified as the M/V Chariot flying the St. Vincent flag, was carrying ammunition of various calibers and that the recipient was the Syrian Ministry of Defense.

Another newspaper, Simerini, said initial reports suggested the vessel was carrying 35 tons of explosives, weapons and munitions.

In 2009, Cyprus confiscated munitions from a ship sailing to Syria from Iran for violating UN sanctions.

The deteriorating cargo, stored in scorching temperatures close to Cyprus’s largest power station, exploded in July last year killing 13 people and destroying the facility. The disaster triggered a government crisis which forced the resignation of the defense and foreign ministers.

‘Car bomb kills nuclear scientis… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    A university professor and department head of a uranium enrichment facility was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, in an incident that looked similar to attacks on nuclear scientists in the city more than one year ago.

The semi-official FARS news agency cited witnesses as saying a motorcyclist stuck a bomb on the side of the car which then exploded, killing one and injuring two people inside. Witnesses told Reuters one other pedestrian was killed in the bombing. FARS identified the victim as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan. State-run Press TV said he was a university professor.

According to the FARS report, Roshan, 32, was a graduate of an “oil industry university,” and headed a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in the Isfahan province in central Iran.

A local official likened the attack to previous ones against Iranian scientists, and implicated Israel in the bombing.

“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists (Israelis)” FARS quoted Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.

Witnesses told Reuters they saw two people on the motorbike stick the bomb to the car. As well as the person killed in the car, a pedestrian was also killed by the blast. Another person in the car was gravely injured, they said.

In August 2011, an Iranian man pleaded guilty to the murder of a scientist that prosecutors said was an assassination ordered by Israel to halt Tehran’s race for nuclear technology.

Majid Jamali-Fashi, a man who looked in his mid-20s, appeared in court to confess the murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2010, the first of several attacks on scientists which Iran has blamed on foreign agents, state television said.

An Iranian physicist was shot dead by a motorcyclist in Tehran in July, one of four Iranian scientists to die in mysterious but violent circumstances since 2007. Iran’s student news agency ISNA quoted an unnamed police official as saying that man was a nuclear scientist.

ISNA named the scientist as Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university teacher who held a PhD in physics. It was not clear whether he was part of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Enriched uranium can be used for civilian nuclear purposes, but also to build atomic bombs.

The United States and Israel have both denied involvement in any of the deaths, despite both countries’ disapproval of Iranian nuclear ambitions, and threats to take action should Tehran refuse to cease nuclear development.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(Too bad, so sad… – JW)

DEBKAfile Special Report January 11, 2012, 10:48 AM (GMT+02:00)

Prof. Ahmadi Roshan’s car

Forty-eight hours after Iran began advanced uranium enrichment in the fortified Fordo bunker near Qom, Prof. Mostapha Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the first uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was killed early Wednesday, Jan. 11 by a sticky bomb planted on his car by two motorcyclists exploding near the Sharif technological university in northern Tehran.
The pair made their escape. Prof. Ahmadi-Roshan was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be mysteriously assassinated in Tehran. The same method of operation was used in a similar operation last year. Iran has blamed them all on Israel.

Tuesday, President Barack Obama received the Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal. Their conversation was shrouded in secrecy. At the same time, US Navy and Air Force chiefs spoke forcefully about the approaching armed conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.
To be continued…