Last Wednesday, a magnetic bomb attached to his car killed Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and his driver. He was the third Iranian scientist to be killed in the last two years.
A top Iranian general accused the U.S. and Israel of these killings and promoting “state terrorism.” Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chairman of Iran’s Chief of Staff, said, “Iran will hold the U.S., Britain and the Zionist regime accountable for their actions.” He also added that these assassinations would not stop their progress on creating strategic technologies.The top cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was blaming the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. He said that the scientist’s death showed “the global arrogance spearheaded by the U.S. and Zionism has reached a deadlock in confrontation with the determined, devout and progressive nation of Islamic Iran.” He warned, “We shall persist in punishing the perpetrators of this crime, as well those supporting them behind the scenes."
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also accused Israel as “agents of imperialism and international Zionism.” Other top officials also blamed the U.S. and Israel. Both of these countries have charged Iran of making a nuclear bomb, which the latter denied.
Moreover, a newspaper aligned with Khamenei argued that Iran should be able to use its power to retaliate. They are calling for the government to respond to these assassinations, suggesting of targeting Israeli officials.
Iran’s ambassador to UN, Mohammad Khazaee believed that these killings are a way to stop Iran from using nuclear energy. Iran insisted that they are producing civilian energy and not some deathly weapons. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency, UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported that Iran conducted weapon related research and that they cannot assure its stability.
On the other hand, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to these accusations by denying that U.S. was “categorically” behind the killings. Furthermore, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta assured the troops that U.S. was not involved.
I think that both countries are in a brink of conflict right now. The negotiations and peace talks between the U.S government and Iranian government have not been going well. U.S. has imposed economic sanctions to Iran, resulting to high inflation. I hope that this war of words would not turn into something bigger and more serious.
2 comments:
Not to sound negative, but with our own political candidates claiming that they would do anything to stop Iran from gaining nuclear power, I would probably suspect the US of sabotage if I was the Iranian president. All the GOP candidates say ridiculous, manly things like going as far as killing nuclear scientists and "air-bombing the country" in order to make sure that the US is in no way threatened. I think this is too much given the fact that Iran really hasn't picked a real fight with anybody and we are just blowing up the severity of the issue.
The American paranoia towards Iranian nuclear action does seem to pin the assassinations on the U.S. For one, it's a bit of an overkill to bomb the nuclear scientists without confirming whether they're even working on nuclear bombs. But what I think matters most now isn't whether we actually did it or not, it's convincing Iran that we didn't. As the post said, many top officials in Iran are already speaking of revenge for these bombings. If we aren't able to peacefully reason these bombings out, then we may be in for a war based on assumptions.
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