Iran, Israel and the West: Goading a regime on the brink

By Dilip -

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was not the first Iranian nuclear scientist to be killed like this. In November 2010, not very far from the scene of today's assassination there were two identical attacks, in which a motorcycle drew up alongside the victim's car while it was in traffic and the riders stuck a magnetic bomb on the door. The bombs detonated as the assassins rode off.
One of those bombs killed Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran who was working on research projects with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran(AEOI). The other slightly wounded Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the subject of UN sanctions and widely suspected in the West of involvement in nuclear weapon design...
Iranian officials have been quick to blame Israel, and the Israelis have not been going out of their way to avoid suspicion. On Tuesday, the head of the Israeli Defence Force, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran in which it would be subject to "unnatural" events.
The Israeli military establishment has a motive to claim successes in the covert war on Iran, because they are under political pressure to start an overt one. The generals, however, know that Israeli air strikes would unleash a war without accomplishing their goal of destroying the Iranian nuclear programme.
A covert war, based on assassinations and sabotage, may appear a better alternative. Individual killings may not seriously hinder a large, wide-ranging programme, but they would certainly deter young Iranians from taking that line of work. But such a campaign is not without huge risks for the region. The regime in Iran has clearly tried to hold its nerve, avoiding overt reprisals that might in turn provoke a military response. But elements of the establishment do seem to be lashing out in frustration...

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