From the Washington Post today:
An Iranian scientist involved in purchasing equipment for the Islamic Republic’s main uranium-enrichment facility was assassinated Wednesday when a magnetic bomb attached to his car exploded in morning rush-hour traffic, Iranian media reported.
….The killing bore strong resemblance to two 2010 attacks on nuclear scientists and came on the same day as a ceremony for the third anniversary of the killing of another professor, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who also died in an explosion.
As far as I know, there’s no firm evidence that the United States is responsible for this. Maybe Israel has planned and carried out all these attacks. Maybe there’s some other explanation.
But it’s hardly farfetched to think that the U.S. is involved, one way or another. And if we are, it means we’re in the business of deliberately targeting Iranian civilians for death, with the goal of frightening their scientists and thus slowing down Iran’s nuclear program. There is, needless to say, a word that describes the act of killing civilians as a way of spreading fear and alarm. We all know what it is, don’t we?
