Two years ago, agents from Israel’s revered Mossad were caught on CCTV in Dubai carrying out a hit on a senior Hamas leader. They were universally ridiculed, and I duly piled on:
It’s bad enough that these spies can be seen in Technicolor going into public bathrooms and coming out in their laughable disguises (some looking like clones of 1970s tennis player Bobby Riggs as they stalked al-Mabhou into the hotel elevator).
I doubt Mossad, known for its stealth and highly sophisticated operations, will ever live down viral videos of its agents acting more like keystone cops than James Bond as they carried out this mission.
(So much for the enviable reputation of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, The iPINIONS Journal, February 18, 2010)
Well, by all accounts, Mossad lived up to its reputation on Wednesday when its agents assassinated a deputy director of Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant with drama, skill, and stealth that would make Bond very proud indeed. They reportedly rode by on a motorbike in broad daylight, attached a magnetic bomb to his car, blew it to smithereens, and were long gone before anyone even realized what happened.
Reports are that this is the fourth time in two years an Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated in similar fashion, which all seems pursuant to a psychological warfare that Israel is waging against Iran.
But targeted assassinations will do nothing to impede Iran’s inexorable drive towards building a nuclear bomb. Not least because its nuclear scientists have far more to fear from the Mullahs who have ordered them to build it than from Israeli spies who might be trying to take them out one by one.
Likewise the draconian sanctions the United States and Western countries are poised to impose on Iran will deter Iran no more than similar sanctions deterred North Korea – now a notorious and bona fide member of the nuclear club.
Of course, nobody is more aware of the limitations of targeted assassinations and sanctions (political and economic) than the Israelis. Which is why all of this psychological warfare must seem like mere foreplay before the big, inevitable bang to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities – with the only question being whether they will do it alone or in a gangbang with the Americans.
Mind you, the Iranians steadfastly claim that their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. Perhaps; but here is the dilemma their refusal to allow UN inspectors to verify their claim poses:
God help us if the United States, Israel, or a coalition of the willing attacks, and Iran’s nuclear program turns out to be no more threatening than the WMDs that were never found in Iraq. But God help us even more if nobody attacks, and Iran’s nuclear program turns out to have the holocaust intent we all fear….
(New sanctions on Iran: shrewd or naïve? The iPINIONS Journal, June 15, 2010)
NOTE: For the record, Iran blames Israel and the United States for this assassination – and for every other setback related to its nuclear program, including a series of cyber-attacks. For their part, Israel’s non-denial denial is as telling as the United States’s condemnation….
Related commentaries:
So much of the enviable reputation…
New sanctions on Iran…
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