Who Killed the Iranian Nuclear Scientists? I Ask the Dead Spook…
“So who has been killing all these Iranian nuclear physicists?” I was talking to the spirit of my old friend James Jesus Angleton, the one-time chief of CIA counterintelligence, via my trusted Ouija board. That device had been out of commission for some time, what with all the “natural” disturbances of life in Washington, DC, but it seems to have recovered nicely from the earthquake and the hurricane, and the familiar gravelly voice came through loud and clear.
JJA: Well, if I had to bet, I would put the family fortune on the regime’s security forces.
ML: Not on the Israeli Mossad?
JJA: No, that would be a surprise to me. Those who think that Mossad killed the physicists are simply reasoning from first principles: Israel wants to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, these guys were working on Iranian nuclear weapons, therefore the Israelis did it. But for the Israelis to do it requires an amazing ability to operate inside an enemy country, and if in fact they have that ability, they would want to keep it secret until such a time that they wanted to deliver a really major blow. Perhaps in the fullness of time we’ll see Mossad’s capabilities inside Iran, but I do not believe we have seen them yet.
On the other hand, the regime had the means and the opportunity to kill them, and it is very easy to imagine possible motives.
ML: You say “motives,” plural. More than one?
JJA: Oh yes! (He starts to laugh but segues into a short coughing fit. Wherever he is, Mayor Bloomberg is clearly not in charge.)
For starters, in a country like Iran where paranoia is the true national religion and conspiracy the most common form of worship, the physicists might have been suspected of treason. Did they attend international meetings? One or two did, I believe, and the victims may have asked for visas for additional foreign trips. That would have aroused dark suspicions in high places. So that’s one possible motive.
The easiest motive is politics. The country is in constant turmoil; maybe these physicists were friends of the Green Movement or some dissident cleric, or were reading the wrong sort of material online. It seems that the regime was very good at monitoring citizens’ Internet activities, after all.
ML: You’re talking about the so-called “man in the middle” scheme to read e-mails, right?
JJA: Right. And you can be sure that the regime is using other methods to hack into the Internet and identify Iranians who are working against Khamenei and his crowd. After all, they are being trained and assisted by the Chinese, who so far as I can tell from this distance are world champs.
We also know that the regime is capable of targeted assassinations, not just the kind of mass brutality we’ve seen in the broad repression. And once you start down that road, as Don Corleone will tell you, you can’t rest easy unless you can assure the silence of all the assassins.
ML: Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead, right?
JJA: Well it’s not that bad, whatever Benjamin Franklin thought. There are secrets. It’s a question of reliability. And in Iran, trust is in very short supply, to put it mildly. Take the case of the guy who just confessed to spying for Israel. You know, the kickboxer. Majid Jamali Fashi.
ML: I remember, he confessed to spying for Mossad and was sentenced to death recently. What’s that got to do with the assassination of nuclear scientists?
The departed spook makes sense. We know the British during WWII let their own ships be sunk rather than risk having the Nazis figure out that Ultra had been compromised. If you have a tremendous asset like an operational ability to kill folks at will inside a tightly controlled country like Iran, you wouldn’t risk it to off a few night watchmen. On the other hand, if Iran did it they could easily blame Israel for it, something a large fraction of the world would assume anyway. They get rid of a troublesome employee, send a message to the others and generate increased ill will for their arch enemy all at the same time. It’s win-win-win, unless you’re someone thinking about a science career in Iran.
They are going to make those scientists sit with all the bigwigs on the main reviewing stand when they parade that first nuke down the avenue, aren’t they? If not, it really isn’t smart to attempt to intimidate someone who knows a lot more about a weapon than you do – like how to fix an arming mechanism so as to appear inactive when it really isn’t.
Your overlooking another possibility, that its the Iranian people themselves. Aside from Israel, the biggest losers if and when the Iranian Revolutionary government manages to get an atomic bomb is the every day folk of Iran. The Iranian revolution can only survive if it achieves atomic weapons capability. They might trumpet how they are going to use it on Israel, but their true purpose is to keep their own people down.
The lesson of the North African revolts against dictatorships is that without an atomic weapon, its only a matter of time before your regime collapses.
Comrade Gorbachev knows that your regime can collapse even if you have lots and lots of nukes.
Oh, and Michael, while I’m feeling gabby, I have a puzzle I’d like you to run through the Ouija board when you get a chance.
The first effort to create an atomic weapon took about 4 years. The first weapon, the easy uranium design was ready in 1944. The more complicated design took another year to perfect. Yes, it took a lot of money, and it took a great deal of resources, but it was the first time it had been done. One can make a guess that the first attempt to do something should be the one that takes the longest.
The second effort was the Soviet Union. They also took about 4 years. Aided by espionage efforts and given the level of destruction in the Soviet Union at the time, it was quite an accomplishment.
From there, we see efforts by the British and the French, each took about 8 years to accomplish their own projects, aided in part by the US.
For China, India and Pakistan, we can say it took them about 15 years of effort each from start to demonstration.
So my question to the Ouija board is this:
Given the concentrated effort by Iran, aided by Pakistan, North Korea and the Russians, given that Iran clearly has access to the science, clearly has the raw materials and has the facilities to accomplish the task….
…What’s taking them so long?
I might add that both Germany and Japan came closer to crossing the nuclear “finish line” during the war than most people know; look up “Manfred von Ardenne” and/or “Kurt Deibner” to see how close the Reich got. Von Ardenne later helped the Russians set off their first A-bomb, and for an encore did the same with their first H-bomb, in the process becoming the only non-Russian to ever receive the Lenin Medal, the Soviet analogue of the Nobel Prize.
The German project was far enough along that they were already working up maps of New York City with estimated blast, flash, and shockwave destruction radii of the type we became all too familiar with a decade later. (“Pictorial History of the Second World War”, William H. Wise & Co., 1946, Volume V, “A Year Of Victory”, p. 2459; note that the map is misidentified as a V-2 targeting chart.)
In 1946, the U.S. Navy dumped several Japanese “cyclotrons” in the ocean off Japan; a look at them shows they were in fact calutrons, used for refining U235 from U238. (“Pictorial History of the Second World War”, op. cit., p. 2158.)
As to what’s taking the Iranians so long, my guess would be feedstock. It’s not enough to have centrifuges to do the refining, you have to have something for them to work on. And up to now, few other states have been stupid enough to supply the Iranians with the raw material needed.
However, with their agreement with Russia re “peaceful” nuclear power resources, that may not be true much longer. Depending on exactly what sort of nuclear fuel the Russians have in mind, that is.
cheers
eon
didn’t Kim Philby receive the Lenin prize?
Not in science. Excuse me, I should have specified. *headdesk*
After the H-bomb experiments, von Ardenne returned to Germany- the Eastern half. There he took up residence as director of the old Max Planck Institute in East Berlin. He finally retired in the late Sixties, and died about a decade later.
By the way, it’s interesting to note that in the first (1949) edition of “Modern Arms and Free Men” by Vannevar Bush, Bush predicted in the last chapter that it would be “at least a decade” before the USSR could build a working atom bomb. The “Lightning” test (U.S. code name “Joe One”) went off while the book was in galleys. The last chapter was rewritten in a hurry.
The Soviet Union had its own nuclear development program going back to 1940. But it would be fair to state that their intelligence assets (like Klaus Fuchs) and some foreign “help” (like von Ardenne) certainly didn’t hurt them any in the R & D department.
cheers
eon
Having looked up those German physicists, and the Wiki article on the “German nuclear energy project” as well, I can’t say my earlier impression that the Nazis didn’t get very close to nuclear weapons has altered much. To quote that Wiki piece: ” . . . by the end of 1941 it was already apparent that the German nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the German war effort in the near term, and control of the project was relinquished by the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) in July 1942.”
1st commandment Thou Shalt Not Have Any Gods Before Me!
Allah is a made up god and the religion is a farce it is not religion of good but of evil and will come to a bad end now and for its followers as well!
Steve DeMarcus, thanks for the rant, but try to stay on topic please. no more like this.
One pleasant side effect of the revelations about the Stuxnet worm is that it raised the big question of who, exactly, was responsible for infecting the Iranian computers with it. Developing it isn’t enough; it had to be delivered. Who did it?
Given a regime that operates on paranoia, and given that the infection had to take place in an area which was high security, then it means that someone with a high security clearance has to have done it — and that put the suspicious eye on pretty much everyone in the program.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys who got killed were suspected of being foreign spies.
There are a fair number of Americans visiting Iran (to see relatives etc.). I’m surprised the regime hasn’t targeted them. Or do they need the money?
It’s been said the best and brightest of the USSR went into the hard sciences–not even biology–and chess because flaming, bright intellects in other fields were inevitably going to visit the Gulag. Too many possibilities of crossing the political and philosophical necessities of the regime. See Lysenko vs. Darwin, for example.
Iran’s gone Uncle Joe one better. So to speak.
To the Shade of Angleton’s musings, I would append this evidentiary review by an Iranian expat. Aarmehr suggested it suits the Mossad to let people think the killings have their signature but the evidence points to within Iran. http://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2011/08/mossad-didnt-kill-iranian-nuclear.html
I wondered what happened to Safire’s Ouija Board.
“pour encourager les autres” -Voltaire
Not the best way to encourage a successful nuclear weapons program. Perhaps it works better for flag officers. But then, this IS Iran.
Here’s my take on the matter-Stuxnet definitely is Israeli, part of MAMRAM’S talent pool, a well that has barely been tapped.
As to the scientists-suffice it to say that others too have their sources, and the fingers that I know are all pointing to the Mossad.
My money is on Mossad’s DEEP penetration capabilities, of course, with the help of informers on the ground.
As for it being easier to hire more physicists, it might not be necessary.
There’s a basic difference between the R & D phase of a weapons program and the production phase. The difference being that once you’ve gotten the design completed, and frozen, you start producing it in whatever numbers you need (and can afford). At that point, the designers are generally retasked to some other job because their input is no longer required, and in fact can be counterproductive.
Constant “tweaking” of a design to get it past “adequate” to “perfect” has doomed more than one project, the classic example being the Heinkel 280 jet fighter of World War Two. Ernst Heinkel just couldn’t stop fiddling with the design, so in the end the Luftwaffe went with Willy Messerschmitt and his Me 262 instead. (Lucky for us- the 280 may have been a better fighter overall, and God knows the 262 was a big enough pain in the arse.)
The mullahs TWEPing the physicists would tend to indicate that their part of any nuclear weapon development project is over. Which means there’s a high probability that they have a “frozen” design, adequate production facilities, and IOC isn’t too far away. Logically (from their twisted POV), the mullahs wouldn’t want the designers either (a) telling tales out of school and/or (b) doing for someone else what they’ve done for the mullahs. Ergo, the designers get whacked.
While it might have been easier to round them all up and ‘dobe-wall them en masse, this method at least gives the mullahs a degree of plausible deniability. Hence the Mossad theory. If they’d just taken them all out and had them shot ala’ Disaster Area, that would be a flare-lit tipoff that something nasty was in the offing, as “Doc” Smith would say.
There’s an old joke in R & D that goes, “sooner or later you have to shoot the designers and start production”. This may be the first time in history that somebody has taken it literally.
clear ether
eon
You haven’t scratched the surface ML.
For the life of me I don’t know why your JJ would fail to give you a heads up on North Korean leader Kim’s recent working,planning vacation to China and Russia.
Wouldn’t such a close supplier and ally of Iran with a similar goal towards the ‘great Satan’ be open to a nuke loan program after getting permission from required sources ?
As we saw with Japan circa December 1941 ,the time is ripe for another surprise,this one massive and unrecoverable while the experts are busy sniffing their armpits.
‘Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall’
Proverbs 16:18
We’re way overdue
Here’s another thought. What if the scientists in question were harboring reservations about their work leading to weapons? If they were clandestinely or publicly vocal against weaponization, would the regime not want to silence them and contain any potential “contagion”?
Alternatively, could these scientists be suspected of some sort of complicity in the infiltration of Stuxnet? It has been said that the code entered the isolated facility via personal thumb drives that workers used to take work home and back again. If the infiltration were traced to a particular workstation or user, would not a paranoid regime worry that this was no mere accident and there was some cooperation involved?
It would not be the first time that a paranoid regime saw dissidents within it’s own ranks.
It’s nice to see that Bob Woodward’s effect on sources in American journalism continues.
Nice touch. The idea has been around a while. I’ve even heard theories on Ahmadinejad getting wacked for the gift of blaming Jews and replacing him with a better puppet. I’m not sure the Mullahs wanted to blow up a missile storage area or crash an IRG transport, but some of their lies are quite transparent.
China and Iran spend considerable effort containing internal threats with intimidation, censorship and surveillance -the usual totalitarian set of tricks. I would have loved to have asked your ghost a few more questions…..
Its obviously a critical time for the Iranian nuclear program. Lots of parts. Finding the targets are more important than a scientist or two. An EPW isn’t worth much if the target is unknown.
One would think however, with a significant number of Iranians alleged to be pro West or anti-clerical, the underground streets for spies should exist. NK, Chinese, Russian spies are there too….
We play to this game too. We must have assets in Iran. We often feed Iranian paranoia. For example; “maybe” there is a way we can send signals so they are either so far undetectable or not jammable. “Maybe” that X-37 deployed an advanced “stealth” transmitter. Transmissions from the ground are then made with a laptop or PDA through a plug to the electrical receptacle where they are routed via current to a radio tower and added to the signal broadcast. True? Does it matter? One could think of a thousand ways to circumvent the Mullahs…….
As the regime races around trying to looking for bird drones and malware, they expend energy. The Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, are assisting Iran to uncover the tools we, the Brits, Israel and the opposition use. Russia helped Hizb’Allah roll back Israeli Intel assets in southern Lebanon. The measures the regime in Tehran imposes as counter-measures erode public support even more, but exposing our cards would be counter-productive to the greater priority, which is as you so rightly put it, dealing with the national security threat when and if the time comes…
And that is likely the view in Israel as well…
But then soon, we might become more paranoid too as our fabric here is both flammable and porous….
eon, you don’t end design until you are finished with testing. Sakarov lasted all the way until he decided to cut in half the force of the biggest bomb ever detonated and avoided an even worse radiological disaster than the one that actually happened. You have to go from proof-of-concept to the varieties that fit both delivery systems and the tactics used. Clearly, neither NK nor Iran have accomplished that.
Sheepdog, ML beat you to that if you read his post.
Marcel, I can only wonder what you think of Chinese rationality. First, WW3 is not an advantage to China that already publicly reports more than 190,000 instances of disorder involving more than 50 people each year. High GDP is what is driving China, not a disruption of trade and energy deliveries. You forget Japan, South Korea and their friends should China “approve” nuclear proliferation from NK to ANYONE. They still have the specter of Pakistan to think about. Look at the blowback just over their offer to build nuclear subs for Pakistan. This puts them at odds with China though it drives up their sales to India. Still, security trumps the cash….
And knocking off a scientist or two wouldn’t thwart your conspiracy theory about the NK nuke which has already been preceded by the Russian conspiracy to supply nukes. We also have ZERO confirmation of ANY warhead NK has made that could fit on a missile. As for the Chinese, exploding the ME isn’t worth the threat to Western China by militant chaos nor the wrath of the world markets China depends on. I think Mr. Ledeen has more than scratched the surface if you look closely enough. Perhaps you underestimate the enormity of any pre-emptive action against Iran and the imperative valve of every bit of information we can glean at this critical moment.
Frankly, there are more effective and “false flag” ways to take out a scientist. An “accident”? Am Iranian IED? Russian-style nucleotide positioning? How about a Chinese .50 cal sniper rifle? Scratch harder without breaking the bulb…..
‘I can only wonder what you think of Chinese rationality’
Who said they were rational ?
A better word to describe China,Russia,N.K.,Iran,Hugo,Islam,etc is determined,especially with the knucklehead Obama at the helm.
Obadiah is a good 1 chapter read on this.
Is China Planning a Surprise Attack
Sorry, “this puts Russia at odds with China”…..
Smart guy, that Angleton. Beautiful analysis. Too bad he’s not still around. Keep that ouija board warmed up ML
The easiest way to play a paranoid regime is to leak hints that you compromised people in high places. Let the witch-hunts commence!
It could be a combination of things surrounding the death of nuclear scientists in Iran. JJA is usually more right than wrong on such matters. Mossad is an easy guess, which would be a good indicator that it isn’t Mossad. Iran would have to know that any assassination of its nuke folks would immediately cause the world to look Israel’s, or even the US’s, way. Given this, the “why?” becomes a good question. It could be that these “low level” scientists had reached the end of their usefulness for the regime and therefore became expendible. Even more so given that the regime would not even be suspected by the world at large. The same case could have been made for the Stuxnet issue, but I don’t want to journey that far into the wilderness of mirrors.
Hi Michael,
Can you try and find out from your friend James Jesus Angleton what really happened in Dubai with the killing of the Hamas weapons dealer whom allegedly the Mossad killed?
There is a story in the Jpost
Australia changed pro-Israel vote after passport scandal
which assumes that it was the Israelis who carried out the act.
Quite a nasty reaction ifit was not the Israelis who were involved.
Given the ancient Persian passion for intricate intregue at all levels…
It is reasonable to assume that somebody with the resources and the resolve to act, concluded that the regime having obtained a nuclear weapon would use it against Isreal or the USA…who both have the ready means to swiftly retaliate in kind.
That somebody’s reasonable conclusion would be that if the mullahs got a deployable nuke, that that somebody could expect to be seated at ground zero.
MAD may not function against the mullocracy but will against pragmatic individuals.
Mr. Ledeen”s suggestions are very reasonable.
Terror does help concentration: look at Stalin’s Zeks and the quality of their research. You kill the fungible, which keeps the others on their toes, and discourages them from getting ideas.
Remember that Fort Knox only employs workers for a limited period of time lest they learn too much about the system.
Never forget that disorganization has a security value all its own: ask JJA about that secret of Soviet success.
When Pakistan set off their bomb, I was working in a large telecom company. We had a lot of middle eastern engineers working for us. Somehow, my name got added to a long list of names on an email distro. It was Pakistanis celebrating their victory, their new-found status as a nuclear power. The electronic chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to India!” and “Death to the U.S.!” went back and forth for several days.
The scary part wasn’t the content.
It was the email addresses. Every major defense and aerospace company in the U.S. was represented, and a lot of other names that would be recognizable only to people in the defense industry.
That was in 1998.
Yes, indeed. Iran has a very large pool of talent.
Or should we say, Islam has a very large pool of talent?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/middleeast/02iran.htm
Were the US to have the means to destroy any Iranian underground facility, what would the justification be for pre-emptively doing so? What signals would we or wouldn’t we be giving the Iranians now? Wouldn’t any strike require measures that would neutralize Iran’s retaliatory response? Would US forces be at risk? Would a US strike necessarily put Israel at risk?
When is the demonstration of power more or less advantageous than surprise?
well i’m against bombing or invading Iran so you’d best ask someone who advocates it…i am afraid that all our dithering will eventually lead to having to choose between the two terrible alternatives of, as Sarkozy put it, “Iran with the bomb, or bomb Iran.” A fine mess! Revolution is better…
Michael Ledeen
ot
we are discussing this book review The Chosen One from claremont in this thread Believe it, don’t believe it — doesn’t matter. and someone posted this “Can someone ask Angleton’s ghost about Cord Meyer and BIC?” your thoughts would be appreciated.
I’d be happy to ask Angleton to write something for the Claremont Review. He loves it.
I don’t get it. I totally understand your wanting to stir a revolution that would effectively end the need for intervention. I support that as the two options you mention are dangerous ones.
I think the lesson of Reagan was a credible stick. Iran calculates we will not bomb them as they race to put in place effective countermeasures such as dummy silos and air defense sites as well as deep facilities at Fordo. While China would not likely approve a nuke transfer from NK, it is already known the Koreans are working with Iran and Assad. Those Korean scientists are prime targets too. Stiffening our resolve in the Red Sea, with interdiction and tighter sanctions, as well as creating the measures that will neutralize Iranian assets would pressure Iran. Right now, they don’t think we’re very serious.
I thought you would agree on the need for credible overwhelming force. So might that be? Some say we should keep our assets secret, but in this special case of Iran, wouldn’t a demonstration and setting some clear red lines that are unacceptable influence the Mullahs more than “I’m against bombing or invading Iran”?
No, I don’t relish the unintended consequences of targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, but how much time left do you think there is before Sarkozy’s two options must be decided? Reagan was prepared to escalate the weapons systems the US produced until Russia blinked. They were on a train to confrontation and faced with resolve didn’t like their odds. I do not understand how your options work in this obviously escalating drama. I fear the constant drone against the use of force and the self-imposed moratoriums on our sling shots is self-defeating and in fact, dangerously counter-productive.
So I ask you, do you think it wise to build our sling shots? And again, when is the demonstration of such force more or less a disadvantage over surprise? Would the demonstration save us from Sarkozy’s options? If not, would it really be a terrible disclosure?
I ask you because of your association with the Reagan administration. I thought they were big on the notion of a strong horse. Ernest Will, Praying Mantis, Nimble Archer, Prime Chance. Do you really think Reagan would let the Iranian Fleet pass in the Red Sea or have not responded to Iran’s attacks on US soldiers in Iraq? Would he not see Obama as sort of a Carter angling for an eventual Grand Bargain were it not being forced into action by the political forces at work in Congress?
You might find Paul Berman’s latest article as mentioned at Michael Totten interesting…
i cant deal with all this, and the Comments section is the wrong place anyway. i’ve written so many times about this, please excuse me if i suggest to read some of those earlier posts. The short answer is that Reagan supported the Soviet regime’s democratic opposition and did the same in many other countries. Sure you need a credible military threat–and Iraq and Afghanistan might be convincing. Nobody knows “how much time we have before…”
‘Stiffening our resolve in the Red Sea, with interdiction and tighter sanctions’
U.N. imposes another round of sanctions on Iran-June 10,2010
LOL,It’s a joke and probably Michael has figured that out by now.
The emperor of the fee world is broke and naked.
Fifteen months after the U.N passed ‘tighter sanctions’ not one Iranian ship has been stopped.
Everyone including Israel have taken Iran’s threat of war seriously.
This is the reality which has been covered up in the media and here I might add.
The Iranians know the West is castrated and fearful especially after the drawn out dog and pony show by NATO in Libya.
yes we are poorly led and we are in a crisis. but.
when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor we were still in a depression that was twelve years old. we had failed to provide help to the democracies against Hitler (except for tricky quasi-covert programs that were illegal and probably unconstitutional). we had no navy no air force and the draft had passed by a miracle, by one vote in the House of Representatives. if ever the West and America were ready for defeat, that was the time.
do not ever underestimate the power of the American people to respond to a crisis. Ask Tojo and Hirohito, for starters…
Yes Michael,
The America of 1941 no longer exists.
The once moral nation which honored God with morality and good law has been replace by godless, decadent,sick perverts at the helm who think they are God.
Be sure that because God is out of the American equation,and immoral,amoral,evil beasts have taken over this time it will not go well.
13 “With Him are wisdom and might;
To Him belong counsel and understanding.
14 “Behold, He tears down, and it cannot be rebuilt;
He [h]imprisons a man, and there can be no release.
15 “Behold, He restrains the waters, and they dry up;
And He sends them out, and they inundate the earth.
16 “With Him are strength and sound wisdom,
The misled and the misleader belong to Him.
17 “He makes counselors walk barefoot
And makes fools of judges.
18 “He loosens the bond of kings
And binds their loins with a girdle.
19 “He makes priests walk barefoot
And overthrows the secure ones.
20 “He deprives the trusted ones of speech
And takes away the discernment of the elders.
21 “He pours contempt on nobles
And loosens the belt of the strong.
22 “He reveals mysteries from the darkness
And brings the deep darkness into light.
23 “He makes the nations great, then destroys them;
He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.
24 “He deprives of intelligence the chiefs of the earth’s people
And makes them wander in a pathless waste.
25 “They grope in darkness with no light,
And He makes them stagger like a drunken man.
Job 12
well Marcel I don’t have Divine authority…
Michael,neither do I, but we can read the handwriting on the wall,no ?
The great superpower of it’s day,Babylon and the mighty King needed an interpreter and Daniel translated;’weighed in the balance and found lacking’
Nothing really changes much across the sands of time.
Same-o, same-o from the beginning of time to the end of time,only we think we’re so much smarter.
We’re not.
try a bit of intellectual modesty Marcel. unless you are the modern jeremiah you do not know when the bell will toll for any given great state. or even a little state. sparta lasted nearly a millenium. who knew? i don’t think i’m smarter, and i don’t begin to know what is going to happen next. just working hard to achieve a decent outcome. and maybe learn a little every day.
Ronen Bergman in his book describes the Iranian Nuclear program in more detail than than revealed by any news agency and he describes events that are suprising considering the general views on the subject wich spoken about in the media, but ring true (as apposed to all the conspiracy theories that lurk around internet forums).
Even Israel assumed that Russia was helping the Iranian Nuclear project allbeit secretly.
(btw the project began a few years before the revolution but was scuttled by the ayatollah as it was against his religious (and pragmatic) veiws. Subsequently it moved into higher gears after he died.) The mossad was wringing their hands and pulling thier hair for years watching Russia secretly deal with the Iranians, supplying them with scientists and infrustructure. On a secret and diplomatic level Israel was doing all they could to thwart the Russians apparent arming of Iran. Only recently did it come to light that Russia was never going to allow Iran to have a bomb. They cleverly helped Iran and in doing so had uptodate intimate knowledge of the program and of course the know how of how to stop it in its tracks. Thus wasting valuable Iranian resources and making billions of them at the same time. Russia if I remember correctly never actually supplied any uraniam.
The nuclear project was most helped to Isreals dumfounded surprise by Pakistan, not Russia and not North Korea.
Regarding what someone said about scientists not being expediant to the program as the technology is pretty common…
The stages of refinement need scientists to run the centrifuge cascades. However the scientists are most needed in the critical stage of the detonater, where the timing has to be precise to the millionth of a second. And the subsequent or parrallel stage of fitting it onto a warhead.
Ronen Bergman is on my “do not read” list. his book is full of errors, and it’s too much trouble to check everything.
It is going to just get worse for the people of the Middle East.
http://msmignoresit.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-in-review-september-2-syrai-iran.html
“ML:Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead, right?”
Thank you Michael, as usual, very interesting Intelligence Analysis!!!
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Iranian Nuclear Scientists or some Iranian Officials got killed by Iranian regime. In fact the targeted assassinations and mass repression is basic feature of any dictator regime’s nature in order to maintain its continuity even if requires the victim to be a member of the regime family.
This great analysis and speculation is remind me in alleged suicide or assassination of Ghazi Kanaan who was the head of Syrian security in Lebanon for 20 years. Ghazi Kanaan was Syria’s Interior Minister from 2004 to 2005, and long-time was intelligence chief in Lebanon from 1982 until 2003in Lebanon.
Syrian regime who is the Twin regime of Iranian wanted to get rid of one of its very close men. Kanaan was in person very close to Syrian president, yet the Syrian regime wanted to sacrifice some of its heads for saving itself. Of course the scapegoat was the head of person who directly linked to the Hariri assassination. At that time was many Officials, among them was Kanaan. But Kannan was the only Syrian Senior Official who was questioned by UN investigators as a witness in the probing of assassination of Rafik al-Hariri. No doubt this proves that Kanaan did not commit suicide, he was forced on suicide or the most accurate speculation, he was murdered by the Syrian government in his office, because Kanaan was the one person who had to “keep a secret” on a charge of the regime’s complicity in Hariri’s Feb. 14 assassination.
So the possible motives behind the alleged suicide, or the assassination were “either the Syrian regime killed the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and Kanaan was about to spill the beans. Or Kanaan would have been as “scapegoat” because he was in person responsible for Hariri assassination and was going to be punished for it and instead he chose death. Or because He wanted setting himself up as the alternative to Bashar Al-Assad because Kanaan have been one of the old Guard men who was opposed Assad’s decision in 2004 to extend the term of the pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud in Lebanon, so Bashar Al-Assad got rid of Kanaan.
So, Michael, the essence of the targeted assassinations it’s only a matter to keep a secret, where has nothing to do with Mossad…But as usual these evil regimes always blaming Mossad on their horrible acts. For example, in 2004, after a string of bombings targeting leading Hamas members given sanctuary in Syria, claimed by Syria regime to have been the work of Israeli Intelligence while it was by Syrian regime. In person I call to assassinate every terrorist by Mossad. And that Mossad and CIA must clean the face of earth from all terrorists and from their evils, and also from those fascists who are an anti-Semitic, whether in Europe or elsewhere!!!
These physicists may not even exist, or they just plain retired (or moved) as part of some disinformation campaign. Anyways I believe Iran is solidly CIA-owned at its top level of government.