UK Sunday Times: Inside Mossad's war on Tehran

jan 17th, 2012 CE

disclaimers:

1. i am sensitive to israel's worries about being a besieged island in a tough neighborhood

2. i am not enamored of iran, but have no ill-will toward it and believe a US-iran detente will benefit it

yet, i believe israel's security paranoia should not be the reason for american policy against iran. 

america should not saber-rattle against iran just because israel is paranoid.

iran is a much smaller villain than pakistan, the epicenter of world terrorism.

consider: iran struggled hard to beat iraq. but pakistan has beaten the americans in afghanistan. 

so who's the bigger threat to world peace?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: B

The Sunday Times January 16, 2012

Inside Mossad's war on Tehran

BY:
MARIE COLVIN AND UZI MAHNAIMI 


EARLY in Tehran's grey wintry morning last Wednesday, Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young scientist in Iran's controversial nuclear program, got dressed at his home in the northern suburbs. The events of this last hour of his life could have come out of a spy film.

Small groups of Israeli agents were watching key points in the Iranian capital. Their target was Roshan. They would be dead themselves if they were caught.

For Israel it was a classic assassination mission. "What is seen in espionage films as a simple operation is a result of hard work, many months of intelligence gathering and a well trained team," said a source who released details, impossible to verify, to The Sunday Times.

"There is zero tolerance for mistakes. By nature, every failure not only risks the neck of the agents but also risks turning into an international scandal."

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has used assassination as a national weapon, striking targets abroad ranging from Palestinians who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, to enemies on the streets of Amman and a Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room in 2010.

 

Now Iran is the target. In the past two years assassins have attacked five scientists in the state nuclear program, killing four of them. Mossad, the Israeli external intelligence agency, is widely believed to be responsible.

The murder of civilians divides Iran's critics -- and Israel's. Some find it repugnant, others see them as casualties in an undeclared war that is greatly preferable to the alternative of full-scale conflict.

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