The Killing of the Iranian Scientist

I haven't talked about Iran lately and this story's a couple of days old. The murder of Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi has been blamed, by the Iranian government, on the US and Israel. (Who else?) But in addition to being a nuclear scientist, he was also aligned, apparently, with the Green Movement opposition. So you have one of those Murder on the Orient Express-type situations where everybody had a potential motive. (And of course in that novel, everybody did it.) (And I'm sure you know Agatha Christie's links to the Middle East. But that's for another post.) The BBC explains the complicated suspicions here.

Gary Sick is reminded of the so-called "Chain Murders" of intellectuals in th 1990s, also blamed by the regime on outside forces but apparently carried out by the Intelligence Ministry.

The catch is that Ali-Mohammadi probably wasn't that high up in the nuclear program (no one is sure, at least among those talking), so assuming that Israel took him out is dubious; but despite links to Mousavi and the opposition, he wasn't a prominent dissident either. Somebody wanted him dead apparently, and I take Gary's point that there are parallels to the chain murders. We may never be sure. Was there a grassy knoll in the vicinity?