makemymark

Spoiling for war? The assassination of Iranian Nuclear Scientists

Paul hastily finishes his morning coffee. He kisses his wife on the forehead. He tells his son that he loves him. He leaves his home and he starts his car and he begins his drive to work. Typical London traffic delays his journey.

Assassins on board a motorcycle trail Paul. They wait for the right moment to attach a magnetic explosive to his car and detonate it. The explosive is designed to cause minimal damage to external surroundings but maximum damage inside the car.

Paul’s car slows as he approaches a roundabout in the centre of the city. The assassins seize the opportunity to strike and attach the deadly device, waiting for Paul’s car to cross the roundabout before detonating it. They escape the scene unnoticed. He is killed instantly. His wife left without a husband, his son left without a father.

Paul was not a socially destructive tyrant of a politician. He was not a poisonous media mogul. He was not a suspected criminal accused of a despicable crime. Paul was a nuclear chemist who worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. His murderers were probably British citizens, activated by external secret services. Possibly the Chinese, perhaps the Pakistanis or even the Russians are ultimately responsible. Paul was guilty of nothing more than doing his job. He is not the first victim either. In the last two years, four British nuclear scientists have been assassinated.

The British government are justifiably furious at such an attack. The ConLib coalition and the Labour opposition are united in their anger. The consensus is that the perpetrators need to be identified swiftly. The response needs to be decisive and robust, military action looks inevitable.

This hypothetical scenario is unthinkable, no?

On Wednesday in Tehran, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was assassinated, becoming the fourth victim of an external covert campaign to disable Iran’s state nuclear programme. Fuelled largely by Israeli paranoia, the west maintains that the programme is focussed on achieving nuclear weapons capability and therefore such attacks are justified. Given that the most vocal critics of the programme already have weapons capability, the hypocrisy is undeniable.

The reality is that such attacks are not realistically going to lead to the collapse of the programme. They are blatant acts of provocation, intent on goading an already isolated regime into retaliation. A violent Iranian retaliation would then require a disproportionately violent response from Israel and the west. The consequence would be another war, motivated by oil.

And if we are genuinely terrified by the Iranian regime that the west has demonised, then we should consider the role that the west played in its ascension to power. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was ousted in 1953. He nationalised Iran’s oil industry. The western response was to orchestrate a successful coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. The Shah of Iran ascended from constitutional monarch to authoritarian ruler and his brutal rule sewed the seeds for the Islamic revolution of 1979. The west then supported their future arch nemesis Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war with Iran, costing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives. Taking these facts into consideration, an Iranian anti-western narrative is completely understandable.

I’ve no doubt that the current regime has sickeningly brutal elements, particularly the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guards. However the Saudi regime is equally brutal and today our Prime Minister has been busy making nice with King Abdullah, securing arms deals and oil contracts.