Spies and Assassinations: Iranian Nuclear Scientists and How Their Deaths Connect America and Israel

A iranian court ordered this Thursday that the government of USA pay US$4 billion in compensation to the families of nuclear scientists who have been killed in recent years, according to local media reports such as the state news agency IRNA.

The resolution responds to a complaint filed in a court in Tehran by the families of three nuclear scientists killed and another who was injured in a targeted attack, IRNA detailed without specifying the identity of the plaintiffs or the victims.

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In its conclusions, the Iranian justice found Washington guilty of providing “protection” to the “terrorist acts of the zionist regime”, referring to Israel. According to the court, “the Zionist regime receives direct and indirect support from the United States, for which the United States is responsible for all its actions, including the support and execution of terrorist acts against Iranian scientists, according to the principles of International Law”.

The fact that Iran does not mention Israel as a state but refers to it as the “zionist regime” responds that it does not recognize its status as a country since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

The court ruling is expected to be merely symbolic, as the US government does not own any assets on Iranian land that could be seized.

However, that has not prevented names such as former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, former Secretaries of State and Defense, Mike Pompeo and Ashton Carter, from appearing among those denounced; or the former US envoy to Iran, Brian Hook.

The verdict comes just two days after the Iranian Prosecutor’s Office reported that several “agents” members of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, had been arrested in April while planning to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.

All this, moreover, occurs in the midst of a new escalation of tensions between Tehran and the West that seems to bury the chances of signing a new nuclear agreement, after in 2018 Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the historic deal achieved three years earlier. .

THE FATHER OF THE NUCLEAR PROGRAM

In recent years, Iran had denounced on multiple occasions that Israeli intelligence was behind different assassinations of important scientists working on its nuclear program.

The most recent, and most important of these, was the Mohsen Fakhrizadehconsidered the father of the Iranian nuclear program, shot down on November 27, 2020 while driving about 90 kilometers from Tehran.

Fakhrizadeh he had been in Mossad’s sights since 2004, when the service was ordered to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Three years later, Fakhrizadeh he was Mossad’s number one target.

The scientist, who headed the Defense Research and Innovation Organization, would also be in charge of conducting a covert program where they sought to build a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a long-range missile.

Fakhrizadeh He had a large security team and received constant reports about possible attacks against him. Even in 2018, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned his name during a speech in which he presented Iranian nuclear files stolen by his intelligence teams. “remember that nameNetanyahu said.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presents a slide with information about scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during a conference announcing that his intelligence teams had obtained confidential documents about the Iranian nuclear program, in April 2018. (Nir KAFRI / AFP /)

Despite this, on that November morning he decided to drive himself from his holiday home in Rostamkala to his country residence in Absard. His wife was in the passenger seat and his security team followed closely behind him.

The convoy stopped at the Absard entrance, due to a vehicle previously positioned by Mossad, forcing traffic to divert. In addition, a blue pick-up truck was parked next to the road, in the cargo area it carried a machine gun camouflaged between tarps and construction materials.

What was impressive about this operation was that at the time of the attack, the operator of the weapon was 1,600 kilometers away from Iran. The attack was carried out remotely and via satellite. It would have been undetectable if the Israeli plan had worked perfectly.

The car in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was traveling during the attack against him in November 2020. The scientist was seriously injured and was taken to a hospital where he eventually died. (IRIB NEWS AGENCY / AFP /)

The error, according to an article in The New York Times where the case is analyzed in depth, occurred because the programmed explosion of the blue truck did not destroy the machine gun. That allowed the Iranian services to identify the murder weapon.

According to the New York newspaper, the operation had the knowledge and endorsement of former President Trump, as they explain, “Israel could not have risked an operation that could spark a war without US support.”.

PREVIOUS MURDERS

The murder of Fakhrizadeh a restart of Mossad operations against Iranian nuclear scientists was also considered. Previously, between 2010 and 2012, at least four academics involved in the development of nuclear technology were killed in Iran.

In January 2012, the university professor and worker at the Natanz uranium enrichment center, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshanwas killed along with his driver while they were aboard their vehicle in northern Tehran.

According to Iranian reports, a motorcycle approached the vehicle and left a bomb magnetically attached to the door. The explosion killed both Ahmadi Roshan like the driver.

The coffin of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan is carried through the streets of Tehran during his funeral, held two days after his assassination in January 2012. (ATTA KENARE / AFP /)

Half a year earlier, in July 2011, Darioush Rezaeinejad was killed east of Tehran. He was a graduate student in electrical engineering at the KNToosi University of Technology in Tehran who was working in a “homeland security research center”.

He was shot dead by a pair of men on a motorcycle after picking up his daughter from school, east of Tehran. According to his wife, Rezaeinejad he had received multiple threats in the previous weeks, so he was always afraid. The woman, who was injured, followed the attackers before being shot back by them.

This would have been aboutthe first public operation of the new head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo”, according to an interview with an intelligence agent conducted by the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

In November 2010, Shahid Beheshti University professor, majid shahriari, died from an explosion. His murder was very similar to that of Ahmadi Roshan. The killers of shariari they had planted a bomb in one of the doors of the scientist’s vehicle. When he started his journey, the attackers chased him on a motorcycle and detonated the explosive from a distance.

Protesters carry portraits of nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari during a protest outside the British embassy in Tehran, on December 12, 2010. (ATTA KENARE / AFP /)

The wave caused one of the murderers to fall from the motorcycle and was later arrested and identified as Arash Kerhadkish, who detailed how the operation was carried out and was later sentenced to death. almost parallel, Fereydoon Abbasicolleague of Shahriarisuffered a similar attack. Nevertheless, Abbassi He survived with injuries to his hands and face.

In January of the same year, the professor of physics at the University of Tehran, Masoud Alimohammadi, was killed in another bomb attack. The scientist was a distinguished expert in the field of quantum and elementary particles. He was killed aboard his car, in the Gheytariyeh neighborhood, north of Tehran, where he lived.

Majid Jamali Fashi, the alleged perpetrator of the attack, declared before the authorities that he had been instructed by the Mossad to park next to the car of Alimohammadi a motorcycle with a bomb that detonated by remote control when he was told that the scientist was in the designated place.

In all these cases, Tehran accused Israel and the United States of being the perpetrators of the murders. While Washington has denied participating in the operations on all occasions, in Tel Aviv they have preferred not even to comment on the matter.

Source: Elcomercio