Another example of Israeli exceptionalism:
Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of its efforts to disrupt the Islamist regime’s illicit weapons program, the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday quoted Western intelligence sources as saying.
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The paper also quoted United States intelligence sources as saying Israel is using sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the Islamist republic’s illicit weapons program as an alternative to direct military strikes.The British daily said Israel’s Mossad espionage agency was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from a reported “gas poisoning” in 2007.
Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli “hits”, intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to analysts.
…[T]he new U.S. administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran’s nuclear installations and that President Barack Obama’s offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.
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“Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don’t realize what’s happening. You are never going to stop it,” a former CIA officer on Iran told the newspaper.“The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don’t want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks,” the official said.
Can you imagine the outcry if Saddam Hussein had poisoned scientists working at Los Alamos, or if Kim Jong Il had ordered the kidnapping of South Korean nuclear physicists? We would consider either an overt act of war.
A few imprecise and rarely fatal rockets that are barely more than toys when measured against the U.S.-funded Israeli arsenal are shot out of Gaza, the Israelis go batshit and kill 1,500 civilians, and the U.S. government calls it justified self-defense. The worldwide intelligence consensus is that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ceased in 2003, but Israeli extrajudicial assassinations of Iranian scientists is met with less than a shrug. “You are never going to stop it.” Funny how that’s never our attitude when it’s an Arab or a Muslim claiming self-defense.
Is it any wonder the whole of the Arab world despises Israel, and considers the U.S. position as an “honest broker” in any Israel/Palestine peace process to be a sick joke?